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2011 Year End Wrap Up 26

2011 Year End Wrap Up
James posing as a hipster on a fixie in Baltimore, Maryland in October 2011 – Photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country As we approach another new year, I have been reflecting on the events of 2011 and how they have shaped both myself and this website. In many ways, 2011 has been a ...

Bicycles & World War II Spies 10

Bicycles & World War II Spies
Agents practising being interrogated. The rural situation of camp X can be glimpsed from the background. (From the Pelham-Burn collection, reproduced by courtesy of Lynn-Philip Hodgson) On 6 December 1941, just one day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, a British spy training camp opened in Whitby, Ontario, some 50 kilometres east of Toronto. The ...

Beach Cruisers and Grey-Haired Bicyclists 19

Beach Cruisers and Grey-Haired Bicyclists
Photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country For many retirees, retirement is a time to stay healthy and enjoy the simple things in life. For some, this may involve a round of golf, a game of ping pong, or swimming in a pool. For others, it’s the joy of riding a bicycle. I returned ...

Canadian Cyclist Harassed At U.S. Border 25

Canadian Cyclist Harassed At U.S. Border
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers on the lookout for “terrorists” – Photo by Mateus_27 With the United States mulling over the possibility of building a fence across the Canada-US border and a Secretary of Homeland Security falsely claiming some of the 9/11 terrorists entered through Canada, it’s not surprising to hear about Canadians encountering ...

Toronto’s Urban Repair Squad Strikes Again 12

Toronto’s Urban Repair Squad Strikes Again
Guerrilla bike lane – photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country At approximately 10AM this morning, Toronto’s Guerrilla bicycling advocates – the Urban Repair Squad – re-painted the intersection at Dundas and Sterling, the location where cyclist Jenna Morrison was run over by a truck and killed last month. Bike lanes were painted on ...

We’ve Been Carjacked 12

We’ve Been Carjacked
Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile & Its Effect On Our Lives – Photo by James Schwartz / The Urban Country I finally picked up a bunch of copies of the book Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives. The book is written by Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez, ...

‘Rethinking Transportation’ Talk 7

‘Rethinking Transportation’ Talk
Today I presented my Rethinking Transportation talk to a group of 50 children at an elementary school in Toronto. The kids belonged to an “eco” group that meets once a month – their ages ranging between 9 and 12 years old. I started out by asking the children how many of them had rode their ...

Is Bicycling Gaining Momentum in India? 6

Is Bicycling Gaining Momentum in India?
Bangalore traffic congestion – Photo by Kiran Jonnalagadda Although bicycles have historically been viewed as the poor man’s mode of transportation in India, there are signs that the working class are starting to view bicycles as an accepted mode of transportation. A recent article in the Indian news publication DNA highlights the rising interest in ...

Avid Urban Cyclist Clothing 44

Avid Urban Cyclist Clothing
Photo by Marc van Woudenberg / Amsterdamize Cycle clothing and gear is a topic I seldom cover here on The Urban Country, for there is no shortage of bicycle blogs out there already reviewing the latest bicycle clothing and gear. But with the winter fast approaching for me here in Toronto, Canada I thought it ...

Trashy Bike Lane 55

Trashy Bike Lane
Photo of garbage bike lane by James Schwartz / The Urban Country On the morning of November 7th, a pregnant woman was killed by the back wheels of a truck in Toronto while riding her bike to pick up her son at school. As a result of Jenna Morrison’s tragic and avoidable death, various cycling ...