While Cycle Toronto’s charter challenge against Bill 212 is less than three weeks away and their injunction request was denied earlier this month, Toronto’s cycling community continues to put pressure on the Ford government to scrap their bike lane removal plans for Bloor, Yonge, and University. To follow up on last week’s direct action by Fridays for Future Toronto, a Critical Mass ride was held last night. Not even the rain could stop more than two hundred people from attending.
By the time I arrived at 6:25 PM, a large crowd already gathered at Matt Cohen Park along with some police officers per the above photo.
A couple of speakers made remarks before the ride including Alex Ganassini from East End vs Bill 212. He was featured on this CTV News report about the event.
Dave Shellnutt provided some logistics updates, as well as called out the “billion-dollar elephant” in the room a.k.a. the police presence. He mentioned the police recently returned to High Park to ticket cyclists.
Here’s a panorama at Matt Cohen Park to get a rough sense of the crowd.
Starting to line up on Bloor.
And we’re off!
About to turn left onto St. George.
We were then stopped in front of St. George station for about ten minutes.
The reason for the hold up was Dave ended up getting a ticket. He then held the ticket in the air, crumpled it up, and threw it out. Some people on Reddit asked what the ticket was for which appears to be for making a left turn on a red light.
There’s Nick Kovats and fellow TCBC advocate Albert Koehl.
About to turn right from Dupont onto Davenport.
Stopped at Avenue Road.
Passing by Bay Street.
Up along Yonge Street.
At Scrivener Square.
There’s Robin Richardson whose Yonge4All campaign helped save the Midtown Yonge bike lanes the first time.
Stopped on Balmoral with a unique looking front bike rack.
Another minor standoff with the police in front of us at Poplar Plains Road. They were complaining about the need to obey the rules of the road, yet a few officers themselves rode illegally on the sidewalk! We then went east on Poplar Plains and took some local streets to Davenport and Dupont.
At Davenport and Dupont.
On Dupont waiting to turn left onto Spadina.
The ride ended at Gwendolyn MacEwen Parkette on Walmer Avenue just north of Bloor Street.
Marcel Jansen from Fridays for Future Toronto (FFFTO) – who helped organize last week’s action – thanked everyone for attending tonight’s ride as did Dave before dispersing. Marcel mentioned more direct actions will be planned in the event any bike lanes start to get removed (which could within the next few weeks or not until April 2026), so he encourage people to sign up for FFFTO’s mailing list.
By this point, my phone died, so Strava recording didn’t capture the ride home.
Thanks to Geoff Bercarich and Dave for organizing tonight’s ride, as well as to the hundreds of you who braved the elements to attend. I’ll close off this post with this video compilation.
In addition to CTV News, Toronto Today gave a shout out the morning of the ride, including citing my blog post about this month’s Bill 212 developments.
Good job, keep at it
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