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The Citizen, 2003-02-26, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2003. PAGE 5. Other Views A little bit of cycle psychology The bicycle has done more to emancipate women than anything in the world. - Susan B. Anthony A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. - Gloria Steinem t’s been a long and somewhat bumpy ride for the familiar two-wheeler. Baron Von Drais started it all. Away back in 1817 the eccentric German hammered together a contraption that became known as the Draisienne. It was made of wood, with a seat and handle bars, but no pedals. In order to ride the Draisienne, you had to shuffle your feet along the ground. The Draisienne did not go platinum. A couple of decades later a Scotsman by the name of Macmillan clapped a pair of wheels onto Von Drais’s hobby horse. They were connected by swinging cranks on the front wheel which were connected to rods and levers to the back wheel. The whole thing was made of iron and weighed about 60 pounds. It, too, was something less than a best-seller. In 1870 the first real bicycle, the Penny Farthing, was invented. It got its name from the difference in size between the wheels - the front wheel looked like a big English penny, the back wheel like a tiny farthing. It took a lot of skill to stay upright on the Penny Farthing and even if you did the ride was bone-crushing, thanks to the solid tires. By the time I came along, which is to say firmly nestled in the glut of post World War II baby boomers, the bicycle makers pretty much had it right. Their new improved product was light, the tires were filled with air, the seats Premier Eves just an average guy Premier Ernie Eves has laid out his first priority in an election expected soon - he wants to get rid of his image as a high flyer. The Progressive Conservative premier started to make the case that he is an average guy in his first, highly personal words in the TV commercials which are his first shots in the campaign. Eves began, “My dad worked at a factory in Windsor. My mom grew up on a farm. Her parents came from the Ukraine. They worked hard to make ends meet.” The premier stopped short of saying he was bom in a log cabin, but went on to claim his humble origin shapes his thoughts and gives him passion for making life better and assuring an equal chance for all. Eves’s emphasis suggests polls have discovered many voters still have an image of him as someone who lives in affluence and cannot identify with them in their struggles to pay their bills, despite his efforts so far to change it. This exists because, as a reasonably well-off lawyer, MPP and minister he was noted for his expensive clothes, fastidious grooming and fondness for restaurants where a meal costs more than the average voter spends on food in a week. A messy divorce showed he spent $30,000- a-year on clothes and jewelry, $3,000 a month renting a Toronto condo and $700 a month on toiletries, laundry and dry-cleaning. This politician really could claim he was squeaky clean. He also moved to live with his partner, Isabel Bassett, a former Tory minister and wealthy widow of John Bassett, once part-owner of the Toronto Telegram, CFTO TV and Maple Leaf Gardens, in her Rosedale and country homes, then was lured away from politics to a $1.2 Arthur Black were soft and the pedaling, thanks to a chain­ drive, was easy. I still rem ember my very first bike. It was a blue and white, CCM one-speed with a leather seat and a push bell screwed to the handlebars. Why, I cut my teeth (my shins and knuckles, actually) on that piece of technological wizardry. State of the art. Yep, by the middle of the 20th century, bicycles had gone about as far as they could go. Not. No one was aware of it, but the winds of change were already licking at kickstands of the bicycle world as we knew it. One day, Tommy Farmer rode into the schoolground pedaling what might as well have been a UFO. It was a racing bike with drop handle bars and brakes mounted on the handlebars right next to a little gizmo none of us had seen before. It was a chrome-plated Sturmey-Archer gearshift with a tiny lever you could move with your thumb. Imagine! A bicycle with three speeds - first, second and third! Suddenly the rest of us felt like we were riding Draisiennes. But of course it was only the beginning. Europeans invented derailleurs which led to Eric Dowd From Queen’s Park million-a-year job in the more financially rewarding world of finance. When he gave up that post 15 months ago to return to politics and run for premier, his first words were he felt more comfortable back on Main Street than on Bay Street. He also revealed he eats at Tim Horton’s and is a regular at a Canadian Tire store and butcher’s shop and he is now seen often in open-necked shirt and faded jeans. Many voters will have difficulty viewing Eves as an average resident, however, because he tried to put through a law that would give business more access to surpluses in pension funds created partly by employees, and was prevented by average guys’ protests. Eves also allows tax credits to parents who send their children to private schools, a perk few average guys can take advantage of. Voters also are wary of electing those who live high off the hog. John Bassett and another media tycoon, Roy Thomson, are among those who tried to get elected to public office, but were rejected. Most premiers before Eves similarly tried to hide any affluence they had. Tory Mike Harris, Final Thought The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. - R. G. Ingersoll the creation of five-speed bikes and then ten- speed bikes. The concept of getting off and walking a bike up a steep hill became almost unthinkable. And even that was the Dark Ages. In the 1980s, some bike boffin came up with the idea of adding cogs to the rear gear cluster. Suddenly bikes appeared with 15, 18 even 21 and 24 gears. Mountain bikes appeared - ungainly hulks with great nubbly tires and complicated suspension systems. Serious cyclists debated the relative merits of brakes from Japan, sprockets from Italy and featherweight magnesium-alloy toe baskets from Czechoslovakia. My first bike, mint-fresh from the CCM factory, set my dad back a whopping $29.95. Today, you can pay more than that for a pair of cycling gloves - and they won’t even have fingers. Or, if you really want to wow your cycling friends the way Tommy Farmer wowed us ‘way back in the ’50s - buy yourself an Urbanite. You can order one from Urbane Cyclist, a shop in Toronto. Urbanites sell for $750 per and they are cutting edge trendy, with great colours, happening handlebars, a ‘way cool imitation-leather saddle... And, oh yes - no gears. The Urbanite is a single-speed bike, just like the ones the kamikaze bike couriers ride in the big city. Just like the old CCM I learned to ride on half a century ago, as a matter of fact. No difference, really. Aside from the $720.05. whose father owned several small businesses, liked to declare, “I’m the guy next door - I’m a working stiff.” New Democrat Bob Rae, a lawyer and son of a career diplomat, insisted he lived frugally and had to pay off a mortgage and car loan like everyone else. Tory William Davis, a lawyer and son of a lawyer, pictured himself as an ordinary, plain- spoken guy dispensing wisdom from his front porch in small-town Brampton. Tory John Robarts, a lawyer who married into wealth, let it be known he started in the rank of ordinary seaman in the navy in the Second World War. Liberal David Peterson was comfortably off and never tried to disguise it and was seen so often at events in tuxedo and crimson cummerbund the Tories accused him of having a “lifestyle of the rich and famous,” the title of a popular TV show, and this extravagance was among reasons Peterson did not last. Eves’s problem is most people will accept he was once an average guy - he just stopped being one as soon as he could. Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise. Bonnie Gropp The short of it Protection please Have you heard about the new industry coming to the area? A factory is being built, and to make life easier for some of the people involved its potential for public harm is going to be ignored. Regulations to ensure no toxic substances are released into the environment only have to be put in place if the owner wants them, because they would prove a hardship for some. Okay, I’m kidding. But I had you worried didn’t I? At a recent council meeting one municipal representative argued to Dr. Beth Henning, Huron County medical officer of health, that prohibiting smoking in businesses is over­ legislation, that owners should have the right to make the choice. The MOH noted that in no other situation would government, or the public for that matter, allow 43 known carcinogens to be emitted into the air, and used an asbestos factory as an example. The other problem with leaving the decision up to the owner of a restaurant or bar is that employees often don’t have the option of where they are going to work and therefore would be subjected to the lethal potential of second-hand smoke. Also, Henning said, the public can be uninformed about the risks, thus expose themselves to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) without truly understanding the danger. Which happens to be that ETS is the third leading cause of preventable death in Canada. That these deaths result because of someone else’s addiction makes it worse. I am admittedly a sanctimonious ex-smoker. But I think I have my reasons for being a little pious on the subject. I had my first cigarette at the age of 12. By the age of 161 smoked often as many as two packs a day. Six years later, after two failed attempts I beat the habit. Now as I’m not exactly known for my willpower I can't help thinking that if I can quit must others could too — if they wanted 'o. And if you don’t want to fine. But whv expose the rest of the world to your poison? There’s no mystery anymore about the dangers of smoking. It can kill you. People are also becoming smarter about the dangers of second-hand smoke. You can kill others. The majority of people who smoke recognize the latter and accommodate by acceptingly stepping outdoors to right up, no guilt, no questions. What truly mystifies me, actually to be more accurate enrages me, are the ones who smoke around others like it’s their given right. The other evening a friend and I went into a local restaurant. It was smoky, but we stayed because our visit would be brief and it was convenient. We sat far away from the smoking crowd. Unfortunately, in this group weie two small infants. They were lovingly tended to and nurtured, while at the same time being put at risk for asthma induction and exacerbation, chrome respiratory symptoms, middle ear infections and bronchitis. 1 wondered, Sadly how any caring adult could be so selfish. Perhaps it is as Dr. Henning says; there are people who still don’t understand. Or do they choose not to? A smoking bylaw will undoubtedly be a hardship to some, but others have suffered for its lack. If, for one reason or another, there are those who fail to show the good judgement to not endanger innocent people, someone had better step in.