By Nancy Miller Chenier
Liz MacKenzie found a “Proverb for the Times” about bicycles pasted in her great grandmother’s 1896 diary. This was the year of a large increase in bicycle popularity in Ottawa.
The mayor at the time, Samuel Bingham, would have appreciated the saying “Bicyclists of a feather flock together.” In 1897, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Mayor Bingham, accompanied by a guard of four riders from the city police force, was at the head of a parade of cyclists. According to the newspaper: “Fully seven hundred wheelmen of the Capital were in line and the procession was nearly two miles long.”
Lowertown children like Tom Barber, who hitched rides with a friend, probably would have liked “A wheel in need is a wheel indeed.”
Liz’s great grandmother reportedly was also an avid cyclist, and according to Harper’s Magazine, 1896 was the year that women “have boldly come to the front as riders, challenging male competition, and making a fashion of that which before was an eccentricity.”
The list of proverb included a variety of pithy one-line expressions that she obviously enjoyed.
Love me, love my wheel.
A wheel in need is a wheel indeed.”
Bicycle boots cover a multitude of shins.
What cannot be biked must be walked.
‘Tis better to have biked and busted than never to have biked at all.