can't help it: from cyclist's perspective/bikeability when visiting new places

[shootingstar]

Shootingstar,

Yeah I always love Ottawa. A lot of people hate on it but I enjoy the Anglophone-meets-Francophone flexibility up there. Plus, I'm a doctoral student studying Canadian public policy so it's a playground. I will "force" myself to ride to Gatineau and buy pastries and speak French (even if it takes me a long time to get what people are saying due to accents). I know I can always fall back in and out of English but the people in that area are so fun to talk to. It's good to refresh my memory once a year with a Francophone trip. Last year, I was in Rwanda doing fieldwork. I am never done with French! I would love to get up to Montreal this time but I am hoping the people I will meet with will give me another chance to come back longer-term with funding so I am praying I can make another trip out of this. As it stands, I am going to Stouffville to meet a friend and her parents at their property out there. Staying there and then leaving for Ottawa for a couple of days, and then hitting Toronto proper to stay with friends on the way back. One of them is a cyclist who is going to show me around. Then, I'm stopping in London on the way back to my parents' to meet with another academic at Western.

I always have loved Canada since I was a kid and this year my team is in the finals for the Cup. I am hoping for a game 6 on top of ALL of this so I get to root for my Hawks at a proper hockey bar. It's gonna be a fun, crazy, and cheap trip. I'm really in need of a break and I will get data as well as good company and riding in on this trip. Usually, I fly. This time I'm taking the plunge and driving so I can stop more places and bring the bike!

Stouffeville, a suburban place north of Toronto is a different place. I went to Western/UWO for my 2 degrees. (Frankly, they shouldn't have rebranded it to just Western. Too meaningless...just an adjective.) I didn't have a bike (because I couldn't afford it), when I went to school at London (ON). But I understand from a cycling advocate who has family there, that London has some great bike routes. It must be through the park system by the Thames River, in Springbank, etc. Across Canada, from the broad cycling advocacy community, one does not hear about London's cycling effort at all.

Living in Toronto at the time, I was never under the impression that people disliked Ottawa. At least Torontonians appreciated Ottawa's cycling routes. They just found the city more quieter than Toronto...which it is. In Toronto, I did work for 2 provincial govn't organizations (one of them the courts), so there was higher level of awareness of English-French bilingualism.