Local teacher recalls reality TV journey

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on December 20, 2024.

Photo courtesy of Leisa Lee Group - Laurie McIntosh is seen as she participates in the Traitors Canada reality show. The local kindergarten teacher finished in fourth place.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

Local kindergarten teacher Laurie McIntosh had the opportunity to represent teachers everywhere by showcasing many of her talents while taking part of the second season of The Traitors Canada.

McIntosh was one of 22 contestants who were selected to enter a historic manor just outside of Montreal with hopes of winning the final jackpot along with her fellow “faithful” contestants. But before they could get to the final, 17 of them had to try and get rid of three “traitors” among them, who were selected in the first episode by host Karine Vanasse. Otherwise the traitors would take it all.

All contestants lived together in the Manor and during each episode they completed a series of challenges. Each night they gathered around a round table to try and figure out who the traitors were and vanish them. While the traitors got together night after night “murdering” faithfuls, shrinking their chances of winning the jackpot and trying to fly under the radar to avoid detection by the faithfuls. The show aired on Mondays from Sept. 23 to Dec. 2, 2024.

“Going into the game, I knew that I wanted to represent teachers and represent them well,” says McIntosh. “I feel like we’re under-represented in a lot of scenarios and in our communities and I really wanted to do that.”

She said she went in with the idea that teachers, as a community, are problem-solvers, resourceful, creative, passionate, determined and relentless.

“I do all of that in my daily life; I have to,” she says. “But I do it without power. In the classroom and within our systems, we don’t have the power necessarily, so my thought was to harness all of those qualities. But have the power as a traitor.”

She thought that if she could take all of the qualities she lives with on her daily life as a teacher and apply those as a traitor, she would have made an excellent traitor, but that only lasted until the choosing of the traitors.

“I sat there on Day 1 and told Karine I want it to be a traitor,” she says. “And the next day I’m sitting at the round table panicking that she’s going to choose me as a traitor. I was just praying I would be a faithful.” 

She said at that point, reality hit her of how hard the game would be for her if she had to lie and deceive.

 “Because you have to be relentless and problem-solving, but you also have to manipulate and deceive and that’s not really part of who I am. So, I was really happy to be a faithful in the end.”

McIntosh got a call in March of this year asking if she would like to take part in the process to become a cast member of the show, which kicked off a long process of selection.

“It was month to month of waiting to find out and getting the for sure go ahead before I left at the beginning of July and then off I went,” says McIntosh.

As she has a prominent and constant social media presence, McIntosh had to get creative to make sure her followers did not figured out she was a contestant on the show, as only her family knew at that point.

“I was very creative around it,” she says with a giggle. “I couldn’t have let people know I was gone, so I was very creative around how I did it, because on social media I knew people would notice. So yeah, I had my tricks.”

So how hard was it to keep the secret? McIntosh said it was actually easier than you might suspect, as she wanted to surprise everyone and watch their reactions along the way.

But not every part of the process was as easy for McIntosh. She says that, once in the manor, she made sure to remind herself it was a game, but she had to do something drastic to make sure she remained in that mindset.

“I was doing my best,” she says, “but I had to surrender to the process, which is hard for me. That’s not something I’ve used to, but I thought, OK, I’ll surrender to this process and see where it takes me.”

On the first day of the game, she says she went back to her room and wrote in her journal, something she did every day until she was eliminated on the final episode and finished in fourth place.

“On the first day, I went back in my journal and thought, I don’t know if I want to do this, I don’t know if this is for me. But ultimately, I was thinking of Lethbridge and thinking of my family and thinking of all the people I wanted to make proud by being there, including myself.”

She says it was at that point she decided to see it through, not having any idea she would make it to the finale in episode 10.

Despite being surrounded by cameras during the entire filming of the show, McIntosh says it wasn’t as weird as she thought it would be.

“You’re so immersed in the game and so immersed in that kind of world that it wasn’t something I had to get used to,” she says. “It was just there from the start and I think I was just so into the game that I kind of forgot that it was actually a TV show being made as well.”

Her competitive side took over and she became so immersed in gameplay that she stopped noticing the cameras being around her, or anything else for that matter.

“I very much knew I wanted to go in and authentically be myself, traitor or faithful. I knew I wanted to build connections, which is something that is important to me in all facets of life. So, I knew it could get me far in the game.”

Now, months later, McIntosh is still in touch with many of her fellow cast members, especially Tranna Wintour, who was the final faithful standing against Neda Kalantar, the traitor who at the end won the game.

 “Tranna and I have processed the heck out of our experience.,” she says. “We speak regularly because for Tranna and I coming so close to the end and just seeing that we had a path, of course you want to reflect on that, you want to process that with somebody.”