The Bicycle: Transforming the World — Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald declared: “There are no second acts in American lives.” Not so for the bicycle. The bicycle re-invented the idea of personal boundaries in the 19th century by allowing people to venture beyond familiar terrain. The automobile went on to usurp this opportunity, but in recent years the bicycle has re-emerged as a guiding principle in urban design, driven by issues of public health, climate change, civic equity and an end to the car’s dominance.

Author, historian and advocate William Humber will describe the 19th century evolution and role of the bicycle in transforming lifestyles and rebuilt environments, and its contemporary potential for re-thinking our ideas about living places from small towns and rural settings to mid-sized communities and magapolitan regions.

William Humber is Executive Director of Revitalization Institute, a global organization based out of Seneca College in Toronto that advocates for the restoration of built and natural environments as part of an economic recover strategy. He is also a neighbourhood advocate for human scale design and lifetime personal mobility in his own community of Bowmanville, Ontario. And he is a noted sports historian, having just submitted his 11th book to Dundurn Press, on winter sports and climate change.  Previous books include Freewheeling: The story of Bicycling.  He is a columnist for Pedal magazine, Canada’s leading cycling journal, and a former selector for Canada’s sports hall of fame

Thanks to the Mississippi Mills Residents’ Association for sponsoring this event!