Back in June, I finally got to join Dismount Bike Shop for their Wednesday evening social rides. At the time, I appreciated the reasonably quick pace and riding on some gravel trails such as the Cedarvale Ravine. For this past Wednesday's ride, we skipped the gravel but did bike along the West Toronto Railpath and through High Park.
Good evening! Hope you have been getting some riding in during the Labour Day long weekend! Given it had been almost a year since I last checked out The Meadoway and there have been a few new developments, I decided to check it out this afternoon.
On Friday, August 28, Toronto showed up big time during a Critical Mass ride to protest the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision earlier that month which gave the Ford government the green light to remove bike lanes on Bloor, University, and Yonge. This morning, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced his government issued a request for proposals to restore traffic lanes on those streets which could put our bike lanes at risk. The most immediate focus is on a 600-metre stretch from Clissold Road to the Tom Riley Park parking lot.
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| A November 2025 protest ride on Bloor Street in response to Bill 60 |
Over the past few years, I wrote a few articles looking at where things stand with Ontario’s trails. It started with a review of the rail trail gaps in June 2023; followed by a follow-up piece in June 2024 and revisiting Toronto’s 2012 Trails Plan in August 2025. I also made a case for a different kind of cycling campaign for Toronto in Spacing earlier this year. Let’s check out some of the recent trail progress.
Earlier this month, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned last year’s decision by Justice Paul Schabas in favour of Cycle Toronto; meaning the proposed bike lane removals on Bloor, Yonge, and University could go ahead. There was also an announcement from mayoral candidate Brad Bradford stating that he would remove the Bloor bike lanes in Etobicoke. Given these developments, a Critical Mass ride was held last night which easily saw more than 1000 cyclists in attendance. Some even cited attendance as high as 1500 or 2000 which would make this ride amongst the largest ever in Toronto!
If you take your bike on GO Transit to Barrie, there are three main trails you can get to. Among these, I rode the Thornton Cookstown Trail last year, as well as the Barrie-Collingwood Rail Trail back in May. This left the Simcoe County Loop Trail which Helen and I did a small part of it from Barrie to Orillia back in 2019. Yesterday, I finally got to complete that Simcoe loop which also marked my first Imperial century ride which is 100 miles or 160 kilometres.
On Tuesday, August 11, I published Part 1 of my experience hiking the Alay Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. If you haven’t read that post yet, I suggest you do to get caught up on the first four days on the trek before reading on to Day 5. 😉
This was the first time during our trek when we had pancakes for breakfast, while we also had Ayran and another kind of porridge. My left leg felt a lot better than the prior day but going downhill was still a bit stressful. Meanwhile, the day started with our first yak spotting of the trek.
