(Calgary) “Calgary, we’re coming baby! », exclaimed Jay Du Temple between two pedal strokes at the end of a blitz of 1060 kilometers of cycling in five days… preceded by a 50 kilometer race outside Vancouver!
“The Rockies are behind us,” he said at the end of “his greatest week in sports ever.”
The comedian, host and great sportsman is once again concluding his tour in style for the benefit of a cause. In 2020, he gave the final performance of his Bien faire tour at the Bell Center by shaving his hair for the benefit of Leucan. This time, the ambitious program is to present his show Fin from one end of Canada to the other by cycling and running across it, while raising funds for the Douglas Foundation and mental health research .
Nearly 750 km of running and 6000 km of cycling? When Jay Du Temple pitched this idea, his team already knew this plan was really going to come to fruition. “I feel great, and the pace is good. When we arrive where I’m doing a show, I always have a day off, so 48 hours before leaving,” says Jay two days after his arrival in Calgary after 185 km of cycling from Lake Louise.
We are at the Alt Hotel of the Germain Group where the comedian is staying, a few hours from the show he is due to give on a sold-out Tuesday evening at the French-speaking cultural and community center of the Cité des Rocheuses. In the alley, it’s impossible to miss the huge recreational vehicle bearing the image of his tour.
Jay had more difficult times with pain in one thigh, but what a thrill to cycle through the Rockies! ” It’s so beautiful. There were times when I didn’t know where to look. »
15 km from Calgary, at the end of his last climb “with 1000 km under his belt”, a welcoming committee with signs awaited him. “Young people who were at my show at the Bell Center in 2020.”
A big concern? ” Eat a lot. » A waitress from Lake Louise couldn’t believe she ordered a burger after a generous steak dish. “She told me the guys in the kitchen were really impressed with my appetite. She asked me: did you have a big day? “, says Jay with his trademark burst of laughter. “I told the waitress I was going to have dessert too! »
Sports have always been a part of Jay Du Temple’s life. He grew up playing hockey, then football in college. In 2020, he started racing, as he tells it in his show Fin.
He also did not expect high-intensity sport to be part of a professional project as is currently the case.
If sport can be a way of “doing avoidance”, his psychologist advised him, it is above all, for Jay Du Temple, a way of “solving matters” and “freeing things”. “I realized that sport helps me a lot to take care of my mental health,” says the man who hopes to donate $100,000 to the Douglas Foundation and who is a third of the way to his goal.
Jay Du Temple is followed remotely by one of the masters of running in Quebec, physiotherapist Blaise Dubois, founder of La Clinique du Runner.
His close guard who follows him in VR is made up of his long-time friends and tour directors Alexandre Desjardins and Charles Gobeil. There is also the videographer Danny Belair (who is filming a documentary!) and Clovis Girard, the nephew of his great professional accomplice Guillaume Girard. “Clovis finished his baccalaureate in physio and the next day, he boarded with us in Quebec. When we got to Fredericton, we learned that he had been accepted into medicine,” says Jay with pride.
Since the former OD host shares his journey on his social networks, it often happens that runners or cyclists join him. He even rode in the Rockies with a young man named Dylan after sharing the road with his sister in the Magdalen Islands!
There were many other happy coincidences and encounters, like Gabriel Malenfant from Radio Radio who invited him to eat at home in Moncton and his childhood friend who came to run with him in Vancouver. “It’s very energizing, but I’m still not absorbing everything we’re going through. »
Calgary was the only city where Jay Du Temple had an opening act provided by comedian David Beaucage, since the latter’s brother lives in the Alberta metropolis. Jay Du Temple was also enjoying a visit from his sister Sarah, his brother-in-law and his two little nieces.
“I can’t believe I gave a show in French in Calgary,” he said, visibly moved, to the French-speaking crowd in the Cité des Rocheuses, where we felt like we were in Quebec and not in Alberta. “Anyone who wants to go racing with me tomorrow, meet at 10 a.m. at the Brass Bro Shop! »
We can’t imagine how Jay Du Temple will feel when he returns to Montreal on his two legs or two wheels to perform the last show of his Fin tour at Place des Arts on July 19. “This will be the end of Fin,” he pinches himself to believe it.
