urban bicycle journeys

Three days into this four day bike ride at mid-morning I stopped for coffee at somewhere called Red Bulb Express Bar in Stouffville, Ontario, suburban Toronto. I sat by myself outside at a table on the sidewalk. I have trouble starting conversations but here two bicycle riders just came up and sat down with me! After half an hour of chatting we exchanged selfies.

This is not a political blog. I also believe one should not go backwards in life although I am breaking that personal rule here. This can be best described as personal shame. These super-nice people did not bring up you-know-who, even though that very week our president was aggressively trying to humiliate our best neighbor Canada. I was pasty-faced about the situation and never brought it up. It was the Elephant In The Room out there on the sidewalk. I am proud to be an American and now feel guilty that I did not apologize on behalf of our country.

“I didn’t vote for the prick” I could have told them.

These two people were not married; he jokedly said they had a “cycling marriage” and that both were in relationships with others. Their habit was to cycle their expensive-looking road bikes the fifteen miles from their town of Pickering, near Lake Ontario, stop for coffee in Stouffville, then ride home. The woman, a hairdresser, said her college aged son had just started a year-long program in Raleigh NC (near my home of Chapel Hill) focusing on cheerleading as a sport, not cheering for any particular school. She said her son was taking one academic class there at community college so he could qualify for a student visa to the USA. Fascinating. He was not allowed to work in America. She seemed dismayed that he could not pursue his passion in Canada.

I was having my usual oat milk latte, one pack sugar, along with some kind of delicious health food cookie; nuts and dried cranberries.

Toronto is on the shores of Lake Ontario only a hundred miles from Buffalo NY. Three days earlier I had flown up from RDU to Toronto on a Friday morning, changing planes in CLT; Toronto was a little over an hour by air from there. I had checked my folding Bike Friday in its suitcase. Here is the bicycle ride I took over four days.

I was determined to take this trip the easy way, just noodle around by bicycle. Distance was not to be the point. Sometimes I have to push myself to not push myself, even though I no longer had any doctor’s orders to restrain myself. I did not try to bicycle in from the airport but instead took an Uber with my suitcase to the Drake Hotel in the “West Queen West” neighborhood of central Toronto.

Up in the hotel room I assembled my bicycle while watching their CBC News on the TV. Canada has its own issues. Toronto is capital of Ontario, the most populous province. Ontario has a conservative/populist Premier Doug Ford who succeeded his similar looking late brother. The Fords have based significant parts of their political careers by promising to get ride of bicycle lanes, a fight that began with brother Rob way back in 2007. The Fords come from the outer Toronto suburbs and play to the resentments towards urban elites. Evidently that fight continues. “Appeal court says province can remove city’s bike lanes” CBC TV advised on my hotel TV this day in 2026.

Now, of course, Doug Ford seems particularly good at scrapping with our president. Ford discovered he could unilaterally and personally prohibit the sale of any USA hard liquor, like Kentucky bourbon, in his province of Ontario, since all hard liquor in Ontario, even to bars and restaurants, is sold through provincial ABC stores.

The Bike Friday now assembled, I took it down in the elevator and onto the street to cycle around my Toronto neighborhood. There were various bike lanes as I noodled for an hour or so through seemingly miles of brick row houses.

In a big city wiithout a restaurant reservation on a Friday night, near my hotel I found a place called Momo which specializes in “plant based sushi” i.e., fake fish. The staff was enthusiastic and the food was actually quite good.

The next morning I strapped my luggage to the Bike Friday and headed out for my semi-planned four day ride. Once again I cycled through neighborhoods of row houses.

The city eventually suburbanized but unlike the USA I almost always found reasonably safe bicycling, either on bike paths or major highways with bike lanes.

Tim Horton’s is Canada’s answer to McDonald’s, except they specialize in donuts and coffee. It’s not great but I wanted to act like a local. At an outdoor table I read my The New Yorker. I am now back to reading the paper version.

Toronto, with a city population of 2.6 million and a metro area population of 6.8 million, is almost as big as Chicago. Ontario looks like America, except when it doesn’t. It’s all in the details. The now-discredited idea of “Towers In The Park” was created mostly by the pretentious Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier who proposed in the 1920’s that they tear down historic central Paris and replace it with high rise modernist apartments surrounded by gardens and open space. Remember the failure of high rise housing projects in American cities? They somehow forgot to read this in suburban Toronto. Ten or fifteen miles from downtown, huge towers go on for miles; most of them seemingly surrounded by, what else, parks. The plan seems to work here.

Towers were scattered among normal suburban housing, although houses seem closer together than in the USA. Single family house neighborhoods often had a mix of duplexes and other multi-family units.

Suburban Toronto is diverse! On this Saturday afternoon in suburban Toronto I cycled through what seemed like miles of conventional houses where what looked like Orthodox Jews were walking to Saturday services in their distinctive clothing. I had lunch at a Persian restaurant where the adjoining table was full of three generations of Iranians. Later on, it seemed everyone looked Chinese. There was a Filipino street festival.

I cycled through endless newer neighborhoods of tract mini-mansions built very close together. In these areas most of the faces I saw on the street, in cars, and the retail seemed Asian, probably Chinese.

Conventional hotels in Toronto were expensive! For a much lower price I stayed that evening in an Airbnb in Richmond Hill, Ontario; maybe twenty or thirty miles north of downtown Toronto. It was run by a somewhat eccentric middle aged non-Asian woman who rented out three bedrooms that shared one bath in her conventional suburban house.

Her place was clean and friendly. She requested I take off my shoes. I put mine on the middle shelf, but she redirected me to use the bottom shelf. Note the hand sanitizer.

Her only “issues” were her following me around instructing me how to meticulously wipe the bathroom sink clean with a designated small towel after each use, and where to put the bath mat after taking a shower. There were lots of homemade signs on the walls giving specific instructions about where to hang the towels and how to open the windows. My room had good TV; already loaded with her personal accounts of all the major streaming services. There were two tents set up in her backyard; I am not sure what they were for.

For dinner I cycled over to a Chinese restaurant in a strip mall and parked my bike out front.

The staff was welcoming and all seemed to speak English, although I was the only non-Asian in a crowded room.

I had had a big lunch so a light dinner of hot and sour soup with a side of white rice was perfect.

The next morning I continued cycling north, trying to see how far the Toronto megalopolis spreads. Once again, there were miles of new-looking large houses built close together.

There were lots of real estate signs and all the agents had Chinese last names with verbiage in English.

I finally did reach open countryside. There was a bike lane along this busy highway.

I had randomly picked Uxbridge, Ontario as my day’s destination. On the way I took a break in Stouffville, Ontario, whose downtown looks the quintessential Canadian or even American small town. I would return to this town the next day. On this first day I stopped at a coffee house called “For The Love of Jo.” The owners were of Korean descent and I ordered oat milk latte, one pack sugar, plus Korean barbecue on a bun.

In several business storefronts in Downtown Stouffville; VOTE Melissa H for Miss Teenage Canada

I cycled on towards Uxbridge, mostly on smaller roads. It was genuinely rural now.

I had started cycling early so it was a treat to arrive Uxbridge, Ontario (population 22,000) at 2:00 PM on a Sunday afternoon. I passed through its downtown.

I went directly to the Second Wedge Brewing Company in a former industrial area a few blocks away. Beer and The New Yorker!

I eventually moved out to their garden, ate a delicious ham sandwich, and watched a local two piece band play original songs. They were quite good, but I found their music less authentic because of extensive use of a looper, where the musicians accompany their own recorded parts. Thirteen second video.

Earlier I had booked an Airbnb in Uxbridge almost walking distance away. A personable thirty-something guy rented out the basement apartment of his obsessively clean suburban house. Later on I cycled half a mile to the restaurant Urban Pantry for the best meal of this entire trip. The waitress recommended a delicious entree I would not otherwise have chosen, from their menu: roasted skin-on chicken breast, lemon gravy, uxbridge vegetables, roasted garlic grainy mustard potato salad.

The early evening weather here was inviting and I sat outside.

The next morning I cycled back towards Stouffville and Toronto, taking a different route. There were bike paths, trails, and country roads.

I had coffee in Stouffville, where I met those two Canadian cyclists. Beyond that I cycled through different sets of tract mansions.

Cycling suburbia is problematic in both Canada and the USA but Canada is kinder and gentler. I was mostly able to thread through residential streets. Several times I saw where some planner made sure that bicycles could continue on otherwise unconnected residential streets.

There were always sidewalks even on major highways.

In a public suburban park I stopped for a rest room. (in Canada “washroom”) Four older women sitting around a picnic table were loudly shouting in Chinese at their card game.

Lunch was in the cutesy block-or-two-long fixed-up downtown of Unionville.

I cycled on through this suburbia, and stayed that evening in a tall Marriott that sat beside a big highway in Markham, Ontario. I cycled half a mile down that highway on the sidewalk for a pleasant Italian dinner. Back in North Carolina it was almost a hundred degrees outside but here the summer is treated as a rare gift. At an outdoor table I had soup of the day, then orecchiette with sausage and broccoli rabe.

All I had to do the next day was cycle the maybe twenty miles back to the Drake Hotel in central Toronto where I had left my bicycle suitcase. I would fly home early the following day. That bike ride was more difficult than I expected.

The Don River is not much larger than a creek where it empties into Lake Ontario in downtown Toronto. The wooded Don Valley cuts into the otherwise nearly flat landscape and Google Maps showed me a clean line of rail-trails leading most of the way to downtown. For a while it was quite nice.

There were problems, perhaps with my software or I should have used something other than Google Maps. Those trails were, in several place, either “closed” because of obstructions or nearly impassable. When I was down in that valley I did not want to cycle up a huge hill to get back on conventional streets.

This blockage was my first; not shown on the map.

I was back on the big road. At least I could ride on the sidewalk.

Once again, Towers In The Park

Back on a Don Valley trail, it was fine for a while, but Google Maps did not make it clear enough which was a walking trail and what was bicycle-able.

I’ll spare you the details but it was a struggle, feeling like wilderness survival in the Toronto city limits. Eventually, the Don River trail nearest to downtown was quite nice.

The trail deposited me on streets surrounded by tall office buildings. My destination the Drake Hotel was about four miles across town. Yes, there are still bike lanes on many downtown streets. Do bike lanes like those shown below make cycling safer? Pro: reserved lanes encourage more cycling and having more cyclists makes all cyclists safer. Con: most bicycle/automobile collisions happen at intersections and these reserved lanes do little to help with that.

Near my hotel I watched what In Toronto they call streetcars, the same word we use in New Orleans. What would New Orleans be like if we had modern streetcars?

That evening near my hotel I found a place called Bar Prima.

Sitting at the bar I ordered delicious Italian style grilled octopus. The bartender said that due to the trade war there was essentially no bourbon. Restaurants kept a few bottles in the back, he said, like an illegal drug.

I took at Uber at 5:00 AM the next morning for my flight home to Raleigh/Durham; two fifty-five minute flights, changing planes in Philadelphia. Airport food is usually both awful and a ripoff but PHL has several branches of local restaurants that serve with a smile delicious pizza by the slice for about eight dollars. Walk around the airport eating it, just like you might do in that city. Yum.