At two o’clock in the morning, the Montreal Forum is still crowded. At the bar of the day, around five o’clock, the last amateurs, still screwed to the bleachers, are more or less pushed towards the exits. It’s not hockey fans who stick to the floor like this. These feverish people gathered there in the name of their passion for cycling. Every year, until the Second World War, they filled the stands. It is no coincidence that in The Plouffes, che emblematic novel of Quebec society at that time, the father was just as passionate about cycling.
Some runners have tireless admirers. Father Plouffe admires Torchy Peden, one of the most adored and paid athletes of the interwar period. The Quebec public also esteems Laurent Gadou, known as “Tibi”. This local cyclist manages to thrill the crowd of his supporters. On May 9, 1931, Gadou saw his career plunge into nothingness. During training that day, in the streets of Montreal, he was hit by the wheels of a truck. At the corner of boulevard Saint-Joseph and rue Saint-Denis, he finds himself swallowed by a mastodon. The athlete is transported as quickly as possible to Notre-Dame Hospital. His foot is crushed. Should it be amputated? The surgeon blew off four of his toes. Gadou had been running for four years then. He will still end up getting back on his bike, like a professional.
In 1919, Montreal listed 6,000 automobiles. Most are owned by wealthy people. For their benefit, it is quickly a question of building a new bridge. How else could they cross the river to cross roads that they would like to see paved? When the Le Havre bridge was inaugurated in 1930 — soon to be renamed after Jacques Cartier — what was still Canada’s metropolis had 65,000 cars. In 2022, the island of Montreal has more than 2 million motorized vehicles.
In less than a century, the car lobby imposed the idea that cyclists as well as pedestrians constitute nuisances within a city. In order for the cars to enjoy the illusion that they are not jamming each other themselves, everything must be stopped around them. In 1925, the Federation of Montreal Cycling Clubs asked the municipality to stop restricting cyclists. A new municipal by-law limits their speed to 8 miles per hour, or 12 km/h. The City of Quebec, for its part, this place where the first cycling club in North America was born, has legislated that the speed of cyclists be limited to 6 miles per hour.
By dint of multiplying the low blows against the bike in the name of the car, the spirits agree to the idea that the fact of moving by the own power of one’s legs, thanks to the ball bearings, constitutes a social anomaly. However, the human had discovered in the XIXe century that the bicycle is more cost effective and efficient in moving its own weight than any other vehicle. With the arrival of the automobile in Montreal, the number of these fine frames registered by the City fell by half in a few years. It will take time for the enthusiasm aroused by the simplicity of the bike to re-establish its nest in consciousness, as the mechanics of these mounts improve.
Until the 1930s, the derailleur was considered a useless accessory. At the Tour de France, the use of gear changes was legalized for the first time during the 1938 edition. That year, we found the first Quebecer on the starting line. His name is Pierre Gachon. With his father-in-law, he makes bicycles, built from English tubes. It is under the colors of Great Britain that Gachon will participate in the Tour de France. The Canadian colony falls under the British Empire. After a long crossing of the Atlantic by boat, the young man is in total disrepair. While the great Gino Bartali triumphed in the event in Paris, Pierre Gachon did not manage to finish even the first stage.
It took until 2022 for a first Quebecer to win a stunning victory during a stage of the Tour de France. At the end of the cumulative stages, Houle finished last Sunday more than four hours behind the big winner. His stage victory, Hugo Houle dedicated it to his brother, run over by a driver ten years ago.
The wheel of time turns. But the crushed feet on a bike and all the deaths caused by the car remain topical, among professionals and amateurs alike. There are more and more cars. However, we continue to believe that it is bicycles that cause traffic problems even though they are most often part of the solution.
There still seems to be surprising resistance to cycling. This testifies to the extent to which our brains have been conditioned to believe constantly that the car was unsurpassable in our life on earth. Thus the CHUM, the new hospital center of Montreal, made astonishing steps against a track reserved for bicycles, but without saying anything about cars. The use of bicycles, believes the hospital, could compromise access to emergencies. As long as it’s done, according to the same fragmentary logic, why not also condemn the movements of cars in this same artery?
Not only do cars cause traffic jams never seen in the history of humanity, but they are the source of pollution that leads society straight… to hospitals. Would there be fewer people in the white sheets of hospitals if the practice of cycling, coupled with other forms of health prevention, were put forward more? The urgency of cycling, in any case, appears greater than ever.