Awake

Sometime a little over two weeks ago a contractor illegally placed a dumpster in the Bloor Street bike lane. Attempting to manoeuvre around this obstruction, a young woman cyclist was hit and killed in the street. The following Wednesday, six hundred cyclists turned out for a memorial ride to honour and remember the fallen cyclist, and to stand at a street corner where our blood has been spilled too often before and to call for an end to irresponsible behaviour on the streets, and for effective measures to protect the lives of all road users. 

 

Memorial ride, July 31, Bloor & Avenue Road

When I see the community of cyclists come together in anger and determination and with the numbers and the strength to take one of Toronto's premier intersections, I remember a sentence from Lord of the Rings. Gandalf has returned and met Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli in the Forest of Fangorn. He tells them "A thing is about to happen which has not happened since the Elder Days: the Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong."

We are strong; strong with human strength, strong with independence from the long fragile supply chains of the oil industry, strong with our reliance on ourselves, strong in our community of cyclists who can come out in hundreds for someone whose name we do not even know. 

We will persist. And we will survive. We will prevail.