In case you don’t know – we didn’t – Thanksgiving in Canada occurs on the second Monday in October. We’d heard there was some good biking in Toronto and a fine system of bike trails, but were disheartened when we drove into the jostle and honk of the city. At church the next morning, friendly Torontonians assured us that the cycling was indeed fine and drew out maps for us to get from our hotel to the trailhead. Monday morning we entered a city completely stilled. While native Torontonians sat down to their full and festal tables, the city of Toronto was all ours, so empty we could bike up the central boulevards.
That’s not going to happen every day, but every day there is a great bike trail system, often completely separated from automobile traffic.
It was hard to remember we were in a city while we rode along the path bordered with bright sumac. The path channelled us right into the heart of they city. What an intimate and human experience a city is, entered this way.
We biked up around the University of Toronto and its lovely bookstore (a great source for the wishful medievalist) and later stopped in at a deli for lunch, which we ate watching old ladies in skirts and wrinkled nylons and canvas tennies as they watched pigeons who watched us both for dropped crumbs. Then biked back home through lovely autumnal neighborhoods as the replete multitudes began to totter along the sidewalks for an after-dinner constitutional.
Useful Links
City of Toronto: cycling maps
Toronto Bicycling Network: cycling maps
imaginary bicycle 