The end of the 2022 World Professional Chuckwagon Association (WPCA) season was a long time coming for a local driver.
Growing up on a farm outside Melfort, Sask., Layne MacGillivray has always been around chuckwagons. He is a third-generation driver, the son of former-driver Dennis-MacGillivray.
Wagon racing ran in his wife’s family as well; his father-in-law is former-driver Wayne Dagg. MacGillivray is also the great-nephew of chuckwagon promoter Cliff Claggett.
In 1989, when he was a teenager, MacGillivray got involved in the sport himself by becoming an outrider.
A decade later, MacGillivray took his place in the driver’s seat. He became a rookie driver in 2000, at the age of 25, on the WPCA circuit.
In the mid-2000s, MacGillivray made the move to the Halkirk area, where he has lived for the last 16 years.
In the two-plus decades since he started racing, he’s finished third twice.
“It was nothing like we had this year,” said MacGillivray.
“Things went really well for us. It was a well rounded season, and the horses performed really well for us.”“
Even though 2022 is MacGillivray’s first World Championship title, he has picked up some other awards along the way, both as a driver and as an outrider.
In 2000, MacGillivray was the Calgary Stampede Rangeland Derby Champion outrider, and aggregate champion. He was again the outrider champion in 2004. In 2009, MacGillivray was the WPCA Chuckwagon Person of the Year, and in 2011 he won the Colonial Days fair.
As MacGillivray, and his team, put in the work his standings slowly improved and in 2017 he won the Herman Flad Memorial Award, which is given to the WPCA’s most improved driver.
“We can’t do well without the help of familiy, our sponsors, and others,” said MacGillivray.
Thanks to his team, and the eight or nine sponsors, MacGillivray was able to have a good showing all season long including at the biggest show of them all, the Calgary Stampede. While he held the aggregate for the event, he did miss out on the Dash for Cash by a few hundredths of a second.
Still, the points earned at the Stampede, and the other races throughout the season, allowed MacGillivray to stay at the top of the leader board with 1500, a full 90 points ahead of second place Obrey Motowylo.
