And The Amazing Race Canada winners are…

After 10 legs, thousands of miles and a pile of product placement, Steph and Kristen emerged as the winners of Season 4 of The Amazing Race Canada, landing in front of host Jon Montgomery on Mont Royal, the first-ever all-female team to take the title.

The couple nabbed cars, a trip around the world, $250,000 and the Season 4 title.

Arriving in second place were Emmett and Jillian, with Joel and Ashley in third. It was truly a nail-biter of a finish with all three pairs swapping first-place positions all Leg long, and I credit the show’s producers for making that way. By mixing physical tests (the Cirque do Soleil and the Biodome) with mental ones (delivering bagels and remembering key points from the season), no one squad was given an unfair advantage. The result? A truly dramatic ending in Montreal.

Cab drivers leaving with $50 extra in their pockets, mixed up directions and nonsense words were just part of the wildness in the season-ender and, really, anyone could have won. This has easily been the most-evenly matched seasons of The Amazing Race Canada I’ve seen.

Kristen and Steph’s win wasn’t an easy one, but by the time they’d left the Moment Factoryâ€”and successfully remembering key phrases from the Legsâ€”the only thing that could have stopped them was a lost cab. It almost happened, but they’d built enough of a lead that Jillian and Emmett couldn’t catch them.

Kudos to the former Big Brother Canada competitors for not giving up. It would have been so easy for Jillian to just shut down after she got her bakery directions mixed up and dropped bagels on the sidewalk, but she didn’t. And credit to Emmett for not freaking out because he certainly could have.

Congratulations to the “First Nations Sensations,” Joel and Ashley, for running a great final Leg as well. If not for the Memory Moments challenge, they very well could have taken the title.

Here’s how the teams finished the final Leg: