Battle on the beach

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This article was published 09/09/2021 (1719 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new CBC show aims to put the fun in the Bay of Fundy.

The series is Race Against the Tide, and it pits 10 teams of two sand sculptors from around the world against the one of the Earth’s most relentless of timers — the record-breaking tides of the Bay of Fundy, where Atlantic Ocean waves surge between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The fast-paced show, hosted by comedian Shawn Majumder, debuts Thursday at 7 p.m. on CBC with its first two half-hour episodes kicking off a five-week run that combines the labour of packing pounds of sand for a base with the careful carving of grains of sand to create remarkable works of art.

The sculptures are temporary though. The teams are given six hours to create their works, but shortly after they are judged, the Bay of Fundy waves wash the works away.

A Manitoba duo, Majid Kermani of Selkirk and Gord Bakaluk of East St. Paul, will find out whether the sand-carving knowledge they’ve piled up during competitions held at Grand Beach translates to vagaries of the ocean currents.

The show was filmed in August 2020, and Kermani remembers how the show’s uniqueness and the competitive level provided for tense times. Some of the competitors are world-renowned sand sculptors, and combined with the tides, making a sand sculpture wasn’t a day at the beach.

“Probably the most exciting part of the show was working with other sculptors. That made us more nervous,” Kermani says, adding he often kept one eye on their sculpture and another on their rivals’ works. “You see how others are progressing and you feel you are falling behind, and at the same time you see the tide coming up,” he says.

Bakaluk knew about Bay of Fundy’s world-renowned tides but gained a new appreciation for them after getting a first-hand view.

“I’ve been on oceans and tides, but it was a drastic change there at the Bay of Fundy,” he says. “It’s quite the thing to watch the water creeping towards you as the day progresses knowing it will ultimately come and take down your sand sculpture you’ve worked all day on.”

Kermani and Bakaluk have posted photos of past sand sculptures on the internet, and Bakaluk believes that’s how the show’s producers picked them for the program.

“We usually compete with each other, but in this show we made up a team and worked together,” Kermani says.

Kermani, who is a mechanical engineer, began dabbling with sand sculptures when he lived in Chicoutimi, Que., about a decade ago, and his interest rose after moving to Winnipeg and visiting Grand Beach, which both call a world-class sand beach.

Bakaluk, who is a retired firefighter, got into building sand castles 30 years ago while enjoying summer days at the beach with his children, but he didn’t get serious about sand-sculpting until he bought a cottage at Grand Beach about 12 years ago and began living only a few steps from the sand.

“I’m sure I probably built a couple of crappy sandcastles as a kid and enjoyed it,” Bakaluk says. “We’d go on beach holidays, be it locally to the beach or to Mexico or Hawaii. We always gravitated to a beach type of holiday, and of course, there you are on the sand, and it seems like the thing to do is to build a sandcastle.”

Race Against the Tide comes from marblemedia, the Toronto-based creators of Blown Away, the 2019 glass-blowing competition series that was picked up by Netflix. The production company was looking to break into network TV, and a brainstorming session led to a mention of building sandcastles, and then the tide of further ideas rolled in, Mark Hornburg, marblemedia’s co-chief executive officer, says.

“Isn’t that a fun competition show, one that which sand artists aren’t just competing against themselves but an actual ticking clock of them competing against the tide as well,” Hornburg recalls.

“My four year old had seen just an excerpt of the show while we were editing it, and he got so excited that he’s been building sand creations all summer long whenever we’re at a beach. It’s that kind of reaction that I’m hoping will be true for the show.”

The series was shot in August 2020, when COVID-19 positive cases were low in the Maritimes. The outdoor setting made for safer filming, Hornburg says, although both the competitors and crew had to spend two weeks in isolation before shooting began.

“Over the past year, during the pandemic, we’ve had the good fortune of shooting shows both outside and inside in the studio, and definitely shows like Race Against the Tide that are shot outside give you a lot more (reassurance),” Hornburg says.

The show is set on a river beach, Kermani says, but after his time sculpting on the show, he says it doesn’t match Grand Beach’s sand. Bakaluk says Grand Beach’s sand was about 25 per cent better for making sculptures.

“I think the sand at Grand Beach is probably one of the best sand I’ve seen (for sculpting). The quality is very good, the sand grains are very fine,” Kermani says. “The Bay of Fundy had a little bit of everything. Small rocks and different ingredients in the beach we don’t have at Grand Beach. I think Grand Beach sand is much better.”

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter:@AlanDSmall