Canadians joined fair derby

Since World War II, it’s typical that “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played before competitive events.

But on Saturday, it wasn’t the only country’s national anthem that got played at the Jay County Fair.

Prior to the demolition derby that closed out the grandstand events at the final day of the Jay County Fair on Saturday, the speaker system played the melody of “O Canada” in recognition of Chris Duchene and Luc Lajoie, natives of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, who made the four-hour drive to compete.

So, how did a pair of Canadians find their way to Portland, Indiana, for a local county fair?

It all stemmed from a suggestion by Daniel Patterson of Bryant.

The fifth-year Jay County demolition derby veteran met Duchene and Lajoie at Bash for Cash, a large demolition derby in Chillicothe, Ohio, and a friendship started to bloom from there. Patterson threw out the idea in May of having them make the trip to Portland.

“It’s pretty distant, them being from Canada, but we talk on Snapchat and stuff,” Patterson said. “I invited them to come down, I got them a couple of cars … Just looking to have a good time and hopefully they’ll want to come back.”

While Duchene and Lajoie said they were excited by the idea of coming to Indiana, they said the work that Patterson did to secure cars for them was key as they got busy with responsibilities at home. One of the cars needed to be fixed up and decorated as late as Saturday morning.

Despite the time crunch, they found ways to make their vehicles stand out with Canadian flags attached to the roof and painted on flags and the word “eh.”

Along with the patriotic theme, they said it was important to them that the fair played their national anthem.

“Oh, that’s huge,” Duchene said of the gesture.

“That’s a big thing for me,” Lajoie added. “I’m a patriot so at home and here I love to hear it.”

A big thing that stood out to them was the size of the derby. While events like Bash for Cash are major multi-day affairs, they said they were impressed by the amount of participation at a county fair.

“You guys have got a lot more people as a country than we do,” Lajoie said. “Where we’re at is such a small square of southern Canada, so there’s not that many people that want to do it. There’s going to be more cars in our heat tonight than there will be in some of the fairs back home.”

Lajoie lasted about 15 minutes in the event before he had to call it quits. Duchene lasted eight more minutes to finish fifth out of the 26 vehicles.

“It was close to the ones in Canada, but a lot more cars so it was more interesting,” Duchene said. “I didn’t do much, just stayed out of trouble. It’s 30% skill, 70% luck sometimes.”