On your bike, Ottawa: Let's look back at cycling through the decades
Bike to Work month may be postponed, but warming weather is getting people back on two wheels.
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This handsome couple pauses to consult their map while cycling in Ottawa's Rockcliffe Park one lovely summer day in 1952. (Chris Lund/Library and Archives Canada)
May is usually Bike to Work Month, but the pandemic has pushed the annual celebration of cycling to the fall.
As we wait for a future with fewer distancing rules, let's take a look back at bicycling through the years in Ottawa and eastern Ontario.
Ready, set, go! At the starting line up for the 1971 Nepean district bicycle race at Confederation High School. (City of Ottawa Archives | CA050773)
Cyclists join a crowd in front of a men's clothing shop at 202 Sparks Street near Bank Street. Today it's a pub, but cyclists are still welcome. (Library and Archives Canada)
A boy rides his bike alongside a column of soldiers marching to the train station in Brockville, Ont., in 1914, on their way to the First World War. (Brockville Museum)
Biking to work: hardly a novel concept.
An Ottawa police officer poses with his bicycle outside a store on Rochester Street, near what's now the Adult High School, in 1896. (City of Ottawa Archives | CA001216)
This undated photo shows a cyclist from the Argentinian embassy in Ottawa. (City of Ottawa Archives | CA034465)
This rather unsettling photo shows a telegram delivery boy with his face wrapped up against the cold and snow. (City of Ottawa Archive | CA042834)
The oldest photos we found were from the 1880s.
Members of the Brockville Cycling Club pose by the city's courthouse in 1883, the year the club was founded as part of the League of American Wheelman. It lasted more than a century, until 2011. (George B. Murray/Brockville Museum)
Members of the Ottawa Bicycle Club pose with their vintage rides on Parliament Hill in 1888. (Jarvis Pittaway/City of Ottawa Archives)
A man poses with his penny-farthing bicycle in a studio on Princess Street in Kingston, Ont., in 1880. (H. Henderson/City of Ottawa Archives)
Some familiar scenery through a different lens.
You can spot several modes of transportation in this old photo taken at the top of the Ottawa Locks: horse and buggy, streetcar and yes, a bicycle. (LIbrary and Archives Canada)
Cyclists take a break off Mackenzie Avenue near Major's Hill Park in this undated photo. (William James Topley/Library and Archives Canada)
Rock and roll: This photo, from the mid-1950s at the latest, shows a cyclist carrying a rocking chair while biking down Ottawa's Gladstone Avenue. (City of Ottawa Archives | CA032540)
This photo shows Montreal Road near the entrance to the Notre Dame Cemetery. It's undated, but judging by the vehicles, it wasn't taken yesterday. (Library and Archives Canada)
Wooden you like a bike like this?
A wooden bicycle from 1898, built by James Henry Blair when he was a teen on his parents' farm. A local newspaper called Blair 'a country lad with brains' who attracted attention by riding his bike along Bank and Sparks streets. It's now on display at Ottawa's Billings Estate National Historic Site. (Gloucester Museum)
Here's James Henry Blair posing with his wooden bicycle on his family's farm near what's now Innes Road. (Gloucester Historical Society/Ingenium)
A bike tire pump from 1925. The basic design hasn't changed much over nearly a century. (Brockville Museum)
