One of Canada’s strongest men joins the Town of Morinville’s Canada Day festivities to pull a fire truck for the Morinville Food Bank.
Scott Wallace, 43, who hails from Chilliwack, B.C., holds the title for the 2016 B.C.’s Strongest Man Competition.
The newly arrived Morinville resident will tow a local fire truck he estimates weighs about 25,000 kilograms.
The six-foot-two, 300-pound strongman normally drags a truck the length of the attached rope, anywhere from 25 to 50 feet. He usually completes the performance in less than a minute.
“It’s been a while, so we’ll see how it goes. My last truck pull was in 2016 in Chilliwack. It was a tractor-trailer,” said Wallace.
The former football player trained for the strength sport about five years and successfully won a berth at Canadian National Strongman Championships as well as various American championships.
At his peak performance strength, the strongman pulled a 100,000-pound rescue truck used in the TV series Highway Thru Hell. Jamie Davis and his team are filmed rescuing stranded vehicles on the Coquihalla Highway, one of the most treacherous in the world.
In Wallace's first 2018 entry, the second annual Edmonton Strongman Show, he topped first place in the Masters Division and scored fifth place overall in the Heavyweight Division.
Just a quick glance at arm muscles as large as Easter hams and legs as thick as tree trunks indicate he’s trained at full capacity.
“I go to the gym a minimum four times a week. I do a training warm-up and I do about 600 heavy squats, about 600 repetitions of dead-lifts, bench presses and core lifts. I’ve even started pushing a truck around the block so I can focus on keeping my body low.”
To build muscle he chows down on 5,000 to 7,000 calories a day that varies from potatoes, pasta and eggs to green veggies, beef and chicken.
The fire truck pull takes place Sunday, July 1 at 2 p.m. at Jean Baptiste Park.
Canada Day celebrations also include a free hot dog lunch, free cake and ice cream, a march from the Edmonton Transit Pipe and Drum Band and carnival-style family games.
Two students from Morinville Public School and Alexander Band School, the Kipohtakaw Centre, will participate in a flag raising. And of course, Bernie Houle’s fabulous fireworks display is slated to dazzle the night sky at 10:45 p.m.
All other activities run from noon to 3 p.m.
