Rednecks, Unite!

The roads to Minto are straight and narrow, and have for generations been little more than a means to carry motorists to beach resorts and big cities beyond this sleepy farming town in Southwestern Ontario.

The landscape is lush, but flat and teeming with cattle and corn. There is no notable shopping or nightlife. The main tourist attraction is a railway museum open only by appointment most of the year.

Yet thousands are expected to converge on the tiny backwater 160 kilometres northwest of Toronto this weekend and pay $5 a head to toss toilet seats, bob for pigs’ feet and bellyflop into a pool of mud in deference to the slack-jawed stereotype that Minto residents believe they embody: the redneck.

Entering its second year, the Canadian Redneck Games is part of a larger trend toward the heralding of a new kind of redneck.

Once a pejorative pigeonhole for white, rural labourers, the term has evolved to imply a lovable hayseed through the mainstream popularity of comedians such as Jeff Foxworthy and Larry The Cable Guy and their Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

It also reflects a rural town’s willingness to embrace the redneck identity in an effort to put itself on the map.

Earlier this year, the games were named “best new festival” by the non-profit Festivals and Events Ontario, and CBC Radio in Ottawa declared them the top festival in Ontario in July — Canada Day celebrations notwithstanding.

“We don’t have a beach or mountains or anything, so we were trying to create something to bring people here,” said Belinda Wick, the town’s business and economic manager. “This is what we came up with.”

To say that Minto had been struggling with its self-image prior to the launch of the games last year is to put it mildly.

The results of a 2005 survey of its 8,500 residents suggest the town had the poise of a Woody Allen protagonist and the energy of an old folks’ home.

Residents complained that bickering between the three villages that make up the town was stifling economic growth. A list of weaknesses included a “lack of retail stores,” a “leaking” tax base, disengaged youth, “no nightlife for singles” and the feeling that “we are not ready to go.”

But it was the “perception of being redneck” on the list that caught the eye of Margaret Shannon, a dairy farmer and member of the town’s tourism committee.

“There were just so many jokes about rednecks and songs about rednecks and that sort of thing that I just kind of thought celebrating it would be a fun way to turn it into a positive thing,” said Ms. Shannon, 54. “In the country, you work with what you got.”

The festival is not a novel idea. The town of East Dublin, Ga., a rural enclave of 2,500 people, has been hosting the Summer Redneck Games since 1996.

That event now reportedly attracts crowds of 15,000 and pumps nearly $200,000 (U.S.) into the local economy.

“It’s a growing thing because rednecks are in the mills, they farm the land, they drive the trucks, they're the working core of any country,” said Frank Fraser, who estimates his Redneck World humour magazine out of Jacksonville, Fla., reaches nearly 400,000 readers worldwide, including 10,000 in Canada. “Rednecks are everywhere. It’s an attitude. I got one redneck who wrote me from Beijing.”

Organizers of the Minto games have taken pains to detach the festival from the image of the gun-toting, beer-guzzling, southern-fried bigot. They define a redneck as any hard-working soul who lives in the country and likes to have fun.

The festival is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to backwoods bawdiness. Toilet seats stand in as horseshoes, the hubcap hurl resembles a junkyard discus competition, and hands and moist underarms are the only instruments needed in the armpit serenade. Posters promoting the games boast that “no roadkill” will be served at the barbecue.

“This takes society’s stereotype of the redneck and plays it up so much that it’s a farce,” said Justin Stevens, programming director at 94.5 FM The Bull, a sponsor of the games. “We live in a time that everywhere you look every person is so afraid of being politically incorrect. We’re poking fun at ourselves.”

The gag has people flocking to Minto like mosquitoes to flypaper, at least by local tourism standards. Last year’s games drew 1,200 people and grossed roughly $23,000, according to organizers. This year, organizers are expecting upward of 2,500 people and revenues of $45,000.

Gary MacDougall, 63, owns Suzie’s 8 Ball Grill, one of three sit-down restaurants in Harriston, the village where the games are staged. He’s a walking history of Minto who has collected more than 64,000 historic photographs of the area.

The outpouring of support for the games has surprised him, given the redneck theme. “When I first heard of it I didn’t think it would go over too well,” he said. “But it went over big.”

For all the excitement it has generated, though, the theme of the games has some locals pulling the brim of their ball caps a tad lower these days.

Jim Clark, 69, a retired engineer from Harriston, said that while he welcomes the economic benefit, he could do without being labelled a redneck by his own town.

“I don’t like that word ‘redneck’ because I know what it really means,” Mr. Clark said recently over a beer at the Harriston Legion, the village’s lone watering hole. “I disagree that outsiders view us as uneducated and hillbilly.”

But Stephanie McInnis, a Harriston Legion bartender whose husband, Jim, is on a tug-of-war team called The Fat Guys, said the Minto festival and its name capture the essence of country living.

“I don’t think they could have named it anything better,” Ms. McInnis said. “It’s a perfect name. We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”