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Competitors beware of the King of Kings

Feb 12, 2016 | 11:09 AM

He’s often referred to as the King of Kings among Prince Albert Winter Festival competitors, but Franklin Carriere can never be certain if he’ll return the next season or not.

“I might show up, but I’m hurting, I’m old, but there’s still stuff I can do just to be in there. When you’re 70 year’s old you don’t know what’s going to happen next week,” he said.

At the age of 70, Carriere has been participating in the King Trapper event since 1966 – the year after the Winter Festival was first created. He’s one of the longest participating competitors in the festival’s history.

 “I was in the dog races up until about 1970 and ever since then I’ve been competing every year,” he said.

Last year at the Winter Festival, Carriere was award the King of Kings Honour after participating in the event for over 50 years.

He was also awarded an honourary King Trapper title in The Pas, Manitoba after competing in the province for over 30 years.

“It’s a big honor for being a participant. There’s not a lot of guys that got honored in (The Pas) – there’s probably not even 20 – and they’ve been competing in The Pas since (roughly) 1905. So I got those honours over the years,” Carriere said.

“So everyone calls me the King,” he said laughing.

Even though he balks at the idea every year, Carriere said it’s because of the men he trains he winds up competing. 

“Every year they come and train with me and then I get carried away [to the event]. I trap all winter too so I keep in shape, but the running events I can’t do, my knees are pretty well gone. But the skill events, I can still compete in them.”

The skills events include bird calling, animal calling, tea boiling, sewing and chopping wood.

“I’m pretty good at everything, the only ones I’m slow on is the running event. (My favorite) is probably the animal and bird calls. There’s not too many guys who could beat me on that one, I even beat my uncles when they were good,” Carriere said.

“I know how to compete, I know how to beat them, they only call certain ways and you call a little different than they do and you beat them. They didn’t figure it out, but I did.”

The Prince Albert Winter Festival runs from Feb. 14 to Feb. 21.

 

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid