Montreal Cycleway to be called ‘Velorutionary’ Robert Silverman

An important cycle in Montreal, Canada, must be named in honor of one of the first fighters of the city circle, Robert Silvermanwho died in February 2022, aged 88. Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante will open Réseau Express Vélo Robert-Silverman-or Robert Silverman Express Cycleway-on Monday, September 8th.

The price was given to Silverman by the Montreal Advisory Committee. The existing cycle was the circle of Rev Saint-Denis/Berri/Lajeunesse. Several years earlier the city named one of its circles for Claire Morissette, who, with Silverman, founded the Circle Campaign team Le Monde à bicyclette in the 1970s.

The largest city in the province of Canada, Canada, Montreal is considered the best cycling city in North America. There, in 2009, modern shares with large city shares took place and has over 400 miles of circles, 150 miles of them are separated from the driving.

Many of the campaign tactics used by Le Monde à Bicyclette are still used by defense groups around the world, including “Die-ins.”

The first such demonstration of Montreal-that was shaped after protests about the game in the Netherlands in the early 1970s, black humor, urging them to “come with me”.

A board in one of these 1970s demanded “Vélo Pour La Vie”-“Bicycle for Life”.

‘When I became a bicycle lawyer [in the 1970s]For the first time I had a reason to live, “the English Silverman told me in 2017.

“I have dedicated my life to make the world a better place through a simple solution: the bike!”

Militant

Le Monde à bicyclette-literally, “the world of bicycle”, or the citizens for cycling or simply Mab-was a rich collection of Francophone nationalists and Anglo-speaking anarchists who, after several years of campaign, successfully convinced his leftist politicians.

One of the basics asks the Anti-Automobile activist team was a center protected by the city center, and this was built in 2007, replacing a lane. It was named for Morissette, who had died of cancer earlier in the same year. Signs in Piste Claire-Morissette State with pride that he was “fighter écologiste”.

Morissette was the body’s creative brain. Silverman was the lead actor. To protest the lack of a safe bridge for cyclists over the river St. Lawrence, dressed as Moses and, tightening the ten bicycle commands (“You don’t kill, you don’t infect …”) The local media loved this and similar acrobatics pulled by the team, such as the attachment of the wings with the bicycles, the attempt to fly over the river. In 1990, Montreal created a pedestrian and bicycle bridge and added strips of bicycles to other bridges.

Maybe because many members were comfortable bilingual and Silverman was a poet in the heart, Mab used words as weapons, though always humorous. Mab guerrillas were “axis-Quixotes, “”axis-Ohholy rollers, “and”axisarrangement, ”they fought against”thisCracy “Using”cyclosandramas. ”

Silverman wrote poems and songs for the group’s newsletter, as this since 1976:

Bikes forward

Listen to the echo

The future of bicycles

Is the end of cars

Le Monde à bicyclette wants to change the planet

Le Monde à bicyclette Will Save the planet

It’s the end of the scourge

There are no other plots

No more pollution

Because it’s the revolution.

Challenges for traffic

In the 1970s, the group’s longest cyclodama was when activists brought massive objects to the Montreal-a staircase, skiing, knight-mâché hippopotamus-while those with less bulky bikes refused access.

After three years of these “cycling”, Mab gained the metro access to the cyclists he had pursued. The MAB also manufactures wooden cars size to install moving bicycles to prove how much space will save Montreal if it fed the cyclists and not just in cars.

“The motorists became really crazy about it,” Silverman remembered in 2017.

Always willing to suffer for the cause, Silverman was sentenced to eight days in the clink to refuse to pay a small fine received after being fished illegally by painting a strip of circle on a residential road. (Released after two days.)

Modern large city shares were born in Montreal. The Bixi Municipal Program (Portmanteau of “Bike” and “Taxi”) was formed on the Vélib program in Paris and one earlier in Lyon. Bixi originally belonged to the city of Montreal, but the losses eventually forced the company bankrupt.

The “Boris” bikes of London were provided by Bixi and were initially accurately used muscle machines used for the first time in Montreal.

In a poem about Silverman, Morissette wrote that “Bicycle Bob” was “a disturber, a fanatic, an epic bike”.

“With tens, hundreds, thousands, people are proud to drive,” he added.

“Make our dreams come true. Thanks to you we can breathe.”

Life

Silverman was still a bicycle lawyer when I met him in 2017. I was in Montreal researching a book, Burstwhich was published in the same year. While he was still a lawyer, he was no longer mobile and I threw him around Montreal into a Trike Cargo Christiana. He showed me the Cycleway protected by CURB in the central business area named for Morissette.

I dedicated my book to Silverman, writing:

For Robert “Bicycle Bob” Silverman and all other supporters of the 1970s cycle who tend to the bicycle flame when designers and politicians were trying to get it out.

I sent him a proof of the designed pages. His answer was surprised by:

“Thank you for dedicating the book to me, reading it really saved my life, I am blinded by macular degeneration that started a few years ago, which was combined in early October with a stroke.

“This is true. Not an exaggeration. In Quebec, dying with dignity is legal … but since it received your dedication [my mind has] changed. ”

It was wonderful that the Bob bike lived until he was 88 and I was very touched by his sincerity. He gave his permission at that time to say this particularly sensitive history.