Highlighting an important yet often ignored part of Toronto’s transportation story, Wheeling through Toronto chronicles the history of the bicycle and reveals a way forward for a world in climate crisis. Throughout its history in Toronto, the bicycle’s place on the roads and in public esteem has fluctuated wildly: flaunted as fashionable, disparaged and derided, rescued from looming obscurity, and promoted as a way to respond to the challenges of the day. What is it about the simple bicycle that it can be so loved by some yet despised and detested by others? Wheeling through Toronto offers a 130-year ride from the 1890s to the present to help answer this question. Albert Koehl, a Toronto lawyer and leading cycling advocate, chronicles the tumultuous history of this mode of transportation from the bicycle craze at the turn of the century, to the rise of the car and the motorway in the 1950s, to the intensifying cry for active transportation in the 1990s and into pandemic times. In an era of catastrophic climate events, Wheeling through Toronto highlights how the bicycle should be celebrated not only as hope for the future, but also for its affordability, for its contribution to clean and healthy mobility, and because it brings happiness and joy to so many. Drawing on archival materials, newspapers, and personal interviews, and full of fascinating vignettes, this book presents the story of how we got here and what Torontonians need to know as we pedal forward.

In the 1960s, Bruce Kidd was one of Canada’s most celebrated athletes. As a teenager, Kidd won races all over the globe, participated in the Olympics, and started a revolution in distance running and a revival in Canadian track and field. He quickly became a symbol of Canadian youth and the subject of endless media coverage. Although most athletes of his generation were cautioned to keep their opinions to themselves, Kidd took it upon himself to speak out on the problems and possibilities of Canadian sport. Encouraged by his parents and teammates, Kidd criticized the racism and sexism of amateur sport in Canada, the treatment of players in the National Hockey League, American control of the Canadian Football League, and the uneven coverage of sports by the media – and he continues to fight for equity to this day. After retiring from his career as an athlete, Kidd became a well-known advocate for gender and racial justice and an academic leader at the University of Toronto. Depicting a Canadian sport legend’s journey of joy, discovery, and activism, this memoir bears witness to the remarkable changes Bruce Kidd has lived through in more than seventy years of participation in Canadian and international sports.

In the late 1960s, a new sport emerged in Canada that would change the lives of many people: wheelchair sports. In Life in the Fast Lane, Chris Stoddart recounts the rise of wheelchair racing, with him as one of its pioneers. Born with spina bifida—a condition that affects the development of the spine—Stoddart witnessed the extraordinary transformation of the wheelchair from a heavy and unwieldy functional contraption to a light and sleek design meant for the racetrack. From his beginnings as a wheelchair basketball player to his evolution into a three-time Paralympian and fifty-mile marathon racer, Stoddart shares his life journey as it parallels Canada’s rise in wheelchair sports. With a matter-of-fact but approachable tone, Stoddart shines a light on the many veterans of wheelchair sports who may have been forgotten over the years. Most notably, however, is this athlete’s dedication to people who live with disabilities. During his successful career as an amateur athlete, Stoddart worked for the War Amps of Canada for almost thirty years. Learn about the history of wheelchair racing in Canada, where we stand today, and what we need to do to make sure people with disabilities share the spotlight with able-bodied athletes.