Ride to Modernity: The bicycle in Canada, 1869-1900, The

Journal of Transport History, The, Sep 2002 by Rosen, Paul

Glen Norcliffe, The Ride to Modernity: the bicycle in Canada, 1869-1900, University of Toronto Press, Toronto (2001), 304 pp., L16.00 (US$24.95).

Glen Norcliffe presents an engaging account of the early days of Canadian cycling and of the different themes associated with it - industrial activity, transport politics, leisure - and transport-- based cycling cultures, and the changing landscapes (both urban and rural) that shaped and were shaped by the bicycle in Canada during this period. His underlying argument is that the bicycle played a minor, but essential, role in the development of modernity at this time. The book consequently veers across a variety of disciplines, including geography (Norcliffe's own disciplinary base), cultural studies, innovation studies and the history of technology and transport.

Norcliffe's basic premise rests on the notion that a small number of `carrier wave' innovations spawn a series of related innovations, spreading also into other industries and impacting not just on industry but also on consumer culture. He argues that the bicycle formed just such a carrier wave - albeit a minor one-- in Canada during the late nineteenth century. He describes how the initial interest in imported bicycles in the 1860s gradually led to the foundation of local manufacture, which itself expanded from small-scale craft production to much larger-scale industrial enterprises. These spawned a range of related products - in fact the revenue from bicycle accessories matched that from the bicycles themselves. Accessories served furthermore to mark out the bicycle as an elite consumer product, something Norcliffe sees as a key moment in the development of modern consumption. Finally, the bicycle carrier wave rippled into other industries. These included tourism, photography and road construction. Norcliffe concludes that the bicycle carrier wave pushed modernity forward in terms of transport and travel, leisure, consumption and production, but was itself marginalised again as the cycling elite moved on to new pursuits once mass production had taken away its exclusivity.

The claim that cycling was important to modernity is not new. The bicycle first appeared at a time of great enthusiasm for engineering and innovation, and its design and commercial progress were shaped in large part by several typically Victorian entrepreneurs. The bicycle was both a product and, as Norcliffe stresses, an agent of modernity, something that has been explored to some degree in specialist bicycle histories as well as in studies of modernity. Most notable among the latter is David Hounshell's 1984 account of the role played by the American bicycle manufacturer Albert Pope in the development of modern production and marketing. Norcliffe moves beyond Hounshell's focus on manufacturing industries by analysing in detail the cycling culture that Pope believed had to be nurtured in order to allow mass production. The book therefore examines various Canadian cultures of cycling that can be found in this period - the modernist culture of the flaneur (on wheels), militarist cycling clubs, high-society cycling and long-- distance touring.

One of the best moments in the book appears in a passage dealing with cycle touring, where Norcliffe exposes the dreariness that can be integral to historical research. He describes a vanity publication from 1887 by an American cycle tourist, Lyman Hotchkiss Bagg, whose Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle - `possibly the most boring book ever published' - included substantial portions covering a trip to Canada. Norcliffe's experience following `in withering detail every mile that this monomaniac rode' will strike a chord in anybody who has ever questioned their career choice whilst poring over battered documents in a dingey archive. At the same time, Bagg's meticulous attention to detail is invaluable in the light it throws on the state of the roads and the attitudes of local people to bicycles at a time when cyclists were rare and could expect to be harassed or even beaten by other road users.

What the Bagg story exemplifies most is Norcliffe's interest in the role that cycling played in expanding and transforming people's relation to space. The bicycle enabled individuals to explore both locally and more distantly in ways that had not been so easy before. Campaigns for better road surfaces made such exploration easier still, and created new possibilities in both social and working life. However, Norcliffe stresses the importance of treating such changes - and also the broader role of the bicycle in shaping modernity - as being played out always in locally specific ways. His account of the bicycle in Canada bears many similarities to the situation in Britain, the United States and elsewhere, but there are important differences. An indigenous industry came late to Canada compared with other countries, and its subsequent development is crucially linked with Canada's colonial relation with Britain. Most significantly, the Canadian climate has been especially influential both in restricting the number of months during which cycling is possible and in providing an impetus to the development of specifically Canadian innovations, in the form of bicycle-based forerunners of the contemporary snowmobile.