Several hundred people gathered on the south lawn of Queen’s Park in front of the Ontario legislature on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, at 2 p.m. I went there with my son Frits, and our friend Francis met us there. We stood by the pedestel of a bronze statue of a guy named Whitney and we listened to about ten speeches. It felt really good.
The government of Doug Ford, the Progressive Conservative premier of Ontario, announced the other day that they want to rip out many kilometres of bike lanes in Toronto, including bike lanes on Yonge Street, University Avenue and Bloor Street. A lot of people are righteously pissed off about it.
I’ve lived in Toronto for 30 years this fall. Before I moved here I lived in New York. Before that I lived in Montreal.
In Montreal I rode a white Raleigh mountain bike to my job at The Gazette (weather permitting). At that time, more than 30 years ago, Montreal had safe, physically separated bike lanes. I used to ride down Berri Street from my home in the Plateau to my job at the newspaper. There was also a decent bike lane on de Maisonneuve Blvd at the time, and pretty good bike lanes too down at the Old Port and going out along the Lachine Canal. I rode my bike all the time. Once an off-duty police officer hit me on Laurier Street and left with nothing more than an apology; generally, though, I felt safe.
I brought my Raleigh mountain bike to New York and one night I chained it to a fence when I was reporting a story for the Village Voice about the people who stood in lines all night to cash in cans they collected on the street. I walked away from my bike to do an interview and when I got back my bike was gone. I got a second bike, which I once locked up in front of the Time Life building on Sixth Avenue. When I came back down all that was left was the frame and the back wheel. Thieves had stripped it. New York at that time was a terrible place to ride a bike.
Then I moved to Toronto. I bought another bicycle. Six to eight months of the year, I have commuted by bike. The bike infrastructure was not very good; mostly the city had painted bike lanes, such as on some parts of College Street and some parts of Harbord Street—certainly not on main streets like Bloor or Yonge or University. I worked 20 years at the National Post, including long stints as a Toronto columnist, and every chance I got I wrote stories about the bike lanes; a search of my name and “biccyle” and “lane” in the National Post database turns up 29 stories.
Over the years things started to improve; the city put in decent lanes on Sherbourne Street and on Richmond/Adelaide. But it was the pandemic that really changed things: all of a sudden we started to get real, good bike infrastructure, like bike lanes on Bloor. I had been to several protests—even Frits remembers riding down Bloor as a kid, ringing his bike bell, advocating for bike lanes.
The crowning achievement of the effort is the incredible bike lane they have recently installed on University Avenue, just south of the legislature, which is probably why the premier has gotten so hot and bothered: he can see a bike lane from his office window; people going about their business on two wheels, thumbing their noses at the North American dream of an air conditioned automobile.
I don’t want to get all bitter and twisted here but I am royally steamed about this idiotic, illogical, self-destructive and vindictive campaign by the Ontario government to rip out bike lanes. Toronto cyclists won these lanes, as we learned at speech after speech on Saturday, through decades of fights, organizing, protesting, rallying, biking, signing petitions, pleading, typing columns in the newspaper ‘til our fingers bled….
I’ve thought a lot about whether there is any argument that could persuade the premier that he is wrong. He won’t be swayed by arguments that biking is better for the environment, does less damage to roads and thus is cheaper for maintenance crews, that cycling keeps citizens healthy and thus reduces the burden on our health care system, nor that bike lanes make cycling safer. Premier Ford could not care less about the wellbeing of cyclists.
So maybe it’s an economic argument that will sway him: he is, after all, a businessman, having made his money at Deco Labels and Tags, the business his father founded in Etobicoke.
The economic argument is that all the most successful cities in the world, the ones everyone is clamouring to live in and to visit: Paris and New York and Copenhagen and Montreal and Vancouver and Amsterdam, and Tokyo and Beijing, are all investing huge amounts of money into improvements in cycling infrastructure. That’s not because they are run by Commies. It’s cold-blooded capitalist logic: cities with lots of cyclists work well and draw in well-heeled residents and tourists who want to live among the clean, quiet, smooth and safe precincts bisected by bike lanes. It’s easier to stop and lock your bicycle to shop; much more efficient than a car, which is why the businesses on Bloor want the bike lanes to stay.
Anyway the main thing I wanted to say was that it felt really good to be with a bunch of like-minded cyclists on the lawn at Queen’s Park. When I was at McGill I went to protests all the time: we protested the nuclear arms race and tuition fees and apartheid. But it had been awhile since I went to a protest. This was a bit of a different demographic: lots of professionals on bikes. Anthony Farnell, the weather guy on Global TV, was there, for God’s sake! He’s a cyclist and bikes on Don Mills Road to the Global Studio on Barber Green Road, he told us. Not only is cycling the right way to get around, he said, it also is becoming easier, what with climate change; it’s also the best transportation solution to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
Not sure if that protest will make any difference. But it sure felt good to gather. After the event was over we mounted our bikes and rode off it three directions: up Yonge, down University or west on Bloor. Francis and I joined the west on Bloor crowd. Some merchants had made signs of support and stood waving as the long parade of cyclists took over Bloor and rode west, ringing our bells all the way.
