This page will be set up as a blog, with stories and recollections from members and former members about how and when the club started as well as on-going events throughout the years. If you have a story you would like to share on this page, email Tom Hakala: hakalathomas@gmail.com.
The Start of OSCC
By Jim Cummings
The first Owen Sound Cycling Club president was Jean-Claude Dupe, who was a pharmacist at the old G & M hospital. Jean-Claude was elected at a meeting at the Owen Sound YMCA in the fall of 1982. The original members were: Jullian Edwins, Ed Delaplante, Laura Robinson, Margaret Sims ( later Delaplante ), Stella Bush, Jim Cummings and a woman form the Y (whose name escapes me – possibly Betty Van Zolan).
The Club then was known as the Owen Sound “Y” Cycling Club because of the early connection with the YMCA fitness programs. The “Y” was dropped a year later.
In the spring of 1983 Sunday rides were introduced and attracted 10 to 12 riders, including a few high school students including Tim Bouma, Doug Laughlan. and Emil van Dijk. Monday night Time Trials were also introduced that summer and the club grew to a total of 34 riders with 15 participating at one event.
Whemmys Enduro
Martin Kerr
I think it may have been Emil who came up with the race name “Whemmy’s” for a local mtb race that I had given the greatly inflated title of “Western Hemisphere mountain bike championships” The winner was awarded the coveted golden saddle trophy which was a plastic bmx saddle screwed onto a broom handle which was glued to a piece of 4×4 and spray painted gold. It soon became a three person relay race and two more plastic saddles were added to the 4×4 .I think the golden saddles are still in the big storage shed at the sawmill trail.
I’m sorry but I can’t recall any dates surrounding the event. Neither can I recall any dates for the interclub series but I know it was running when I started racing with the club. Emil, Gary Luke and Tim Bouma were going to those races in the early years. I think that Emil should be able to give you lots of the kind of information you might be after.
Whemmys, Spring Fling and other events
Emil van Dijk
It’s unfortunate that when we organized these events we didn’t have an historian on hand to document everything. That’s a roundabout way of saying I don’t remember.
My involvement with the club began in my late teenage years, probably 1981, which I think was also the first year of the club’s existence. Ed de la Plante organized a bike race that was held on a course on 3rd Ave W, 21st St W, 4th Ave W and 20th St W. It was rather wild. After that Ed invited me to the time trials which was on the East Bayshore Road. Presumably the time trials began that first year as well.
My first inter-club race was the next spring, 1982, but I got the impression that the inter-clubs had been going on for a while prior to that. The member clubs were Barrie, Collingwood and Newmarket, with Owen Sound admitted later.
As for the Whemmys Enduro, I’m guessing when I say they started in the 1990s (First Whemmys Enduro registration form was in the Sept. 1995 Outspoken. Ed.). The Spring Fling preceded the Whemmys by a couple of years, so somewhere in the mid 90s would be the first Spring Fling.
Another historical tidbit is the schism that led to the formation of the Phoenix club. Hopefully Jim Cummings remembers the specifics.
Jean-Claude Dube was one of the club founders, and he and Dr. Jack Ostrander are the only lifetime members, thanks to having donated money when the club was in financial peril.
Dave Armchuk handled the paperwork that saw the club become an incorporated entity.
Ed’s OSCC Memories
Ed de la Plante
I moved to Owen Sound in 1980 and was already a cyclist (on my 10 speed!) and did not really notice the absence of a club. Credit for starting the club certainly goes to others although I was there from the start. Here are the highlights of my weakening memory from 40 years ago:
I believe the club started in 1982, with a meeting at the Family Y. Believe it or not, this is where I met my late wife Margaret so I remember the meeting well. I can’t remember who chaired the meeting but it may have been the first President, whose name I do not remember, but do recall that he moved out of OS a few years later. Jim Cummings was a leader of the club from the very start as he had already had a long history in the sport. Dr. Jack Ostrander joined the club early and was one of the few to buy a life membership at a time when the club needed money for hosting races.
Julian Edwins ( I still have a bike he made for me) was also an early supporter of the club.
I was on the first executive and my role was to organize the weekly 15km time trial that started near the water treatment plant and turned around about half way up the hill to Annan. Julian Edwins did the timing. A few years later, the tt moved to Shallow Lake where traffic was less of an issue.
The club had weekly group rides from the city that were well attended. I often tell people that the best road cycling in Canada, (and now possibly gravel) is located in Grey and Bruce counties.
Jim Cummings and Julian, both with racing backgrounds, got the club into hosting races. The annual race (I don’t remember how many years we did it) was a circuit race that went up 9th St. hill and down Moore’s hill. It was promoted well in the city and I recall expecting a large turnout of spectators, but there was only a handful or two. There was no shortage of complaints about disrupting traffic, for a bike race. I had a poster for the race until I moved out of OS and gave it to Doug at Bike Face – maybe it’s still there. The other big traffic disrupting event sponsored by the club was the Ontario Road Race Championships, that did a loop from Kelso Beach. I recall having a lot of fun driving the wheel replacement vehicle around the course during the race. Once again, spectators were scarce.
Considering that the club started in the dark ages of communications, I wonder how we communicated!
OSCC, History as I Remember It
By Laura Robinson
Here’s just a little bit of wonderful memories about the Owen Sound Cycling Club and the days before we became official members of the Canadian Cycling Association—now Cycling Canada.
My family moved to Owen Sound in 1976, but I stayed in Mississauga as I was about to enter grade 13 and was trying to pass two math courses with no real ability at math. But another reason to stay put was because the Mississauga Cycling Club over which my brother David and I became enamoured in the summer of 1972, continued to be such a wonderful home for my wanderlust heart. During my weekend trips to Owen Sound in 1976-77 I never once saw what my brother and I called, “a serious cyclist.”
I shouldn’t have calculated the cycling devotion of such a vast area as Grey and Bruce Counties by weekend estimates. By 1979 the Owen Sound Y was sponsoring “Cycling Freedom for Women”, a non-competitive cycling program in which women could get to know their bikes, their gears, and their strong and enduring bodies. An informal group continued to ride together and called itself the Owen Sound Cycling Club, but it wasn’t until 1998? that a larger and diverse group came together and formalized the club as an entity and joined both the Ontario and Canadian Cycling Associations. How cool it was to join the oldest sport governing body in Canada. The CCA had turned 100 in 1982. Even more cool was—and is—the fact that people understood at a deep place within their soul that riding a bike is what humans were meant to do. Nothing like opening one’s heart, finding more space in one’s lungs, and spinning those legs to be transported to the never never land of cycling where magic happens.
We enjoyed wonderful club rides, forming friendships that have met the test of time. The Owen Sound Cycling Club still has club rides—they beat gyms, screens and hot yoga any day. In the winter most of us joined the Bruce Ski Club and met one another on cross-country ski trails.
OSCC had club time trials and road races, and inter-club races with clubs in the surrounding area. Eventually the time trials looked like the start of an international event with the most aero and expensive equipment, along with skinsuits and spaceship-style helmets. As we got older we looked to lighter and sleeker equipment to make up for what we lost—even if gradually—through aging. The one person for whom aging appeared not to impact was the immortal Martin Kerr of Wiarton. The time trial results for the 30 km Walter’s Falls course on July 15, 2008 note, “Martin is resurrected and faster than ever!! New course record”. His average speed was 42.02 km/hr. Next up in the 30-39 age category was Jeff Wardell (hardly a slouch!) with an average speed of 37.47 km/hr. Martin—in the 50-59 age category had put nearly 5 minutes between himself and the next fastest rider.
The club has had many blasting-fast members. Back in the 1980’s Tim Bouma, Emil Van Dijk, Doug (last name??), and Ed De la Plante set club time trial records before all the aero equipment starting appearing. We had road races by then and I did everything I possibly could to try to stay with these guys for as long as possible. I liked the Australian starts because slower cyclists got to start first and then another group that had average times a bit faster would go off a few minutes later, the next group would be that much faster until the final group had the whipper-snapper fastest riders in it who had to catch all groups before the race ended. Races were at least 40 km long, and I remember being in the second-fastest group on our last lap when the fastest group caught us. We were doing a double echelon and they were doing a single echelon, or the reverse—no matter what when we became one big group I could hear metal hitting metal, pedals scraping, people yelling—one big schmoazell—but no one fell. It was an entire miracle given that there must have been 20 of us going full tilt. Out of the pack I heard Fred Klicka—an Austrian from Kincardine declare, “Vell, if it vasn’t for my excellent bike handling skills, ve all vould have gone down!”.
But more important than setting club records was the contributions and work people gave over all these decades to make riding a bike a beautiful life-long experience for as many people as possible—whether they joined this wonderful club or not. This included all timers and, marshals, race and ride organizers. Of them all I think of Jim Cummings with the greatest of fondness and admiration. He started riding a bike in Ireland a million years ago, and the OSCC, the entire cycling population and area have been infinitely served by his big heart, commitment to life on two wheels and what riding your bike brings to holistic health. He was a fierce time trailer in the club’s early decades, timed, organized and marshalled plenty of events and over the past years has been pivotal in the annual Ride Don’t Hide cycling event to de-stigmatize mental health, raise its awareness, and help fund local projects.
Let’s ensure that people everywhere are able to swing their leg over a saddle and ride into the magical place where the bicycle has infinite velocity.
The First Timer
Tom Hakala
A few years after I moved to the East Bayshore Road in the seventys, I noticed that every Monday evening there were cyclists zooming past like the hounds of hell were after them.
Finally my curiosity got the best of me and I took my Eaton’s Ten Speed back toward town one evening to find a mass of riders on top of the hill in front of the Hobart plant waiting their turn to fly down the hill. I held back as I felt somewhat intimidated by their obviously high end bikes and cycling attire. Then a young woman named Laura came over and started talking to me.
She was very friendly and explained that this was the Owen Sound Cycling Club and they were doing time trials. She then tried to talk me into giving it a try. I was reluctant since I had never done more than ride my bike to work and certainly never rode at a fast pace like a race. But she was very persistent so I finally agreed. She introduced me to Julian who was doing the timing and was also the team coach.
I went to the back of the line and a young fellow in front of me, who said his name was Emil, said not to go too hard at first. He said that I will ride out to Leith, go over the bridge the go up the hill at Annan. There will be a person standing there where
I am to turn and go back down the hill and then head back to Hobart. As the line shortened and I came closer to this fellow Julian, I thought of bail- ing but stuck it out.
By the time it was my turn, my heart was pounding and my nerves were frazzled. 10, 9, 8, (What am I doing here!) 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,1, GO! I came down hard on the open pedals and my foot slipped off and the pedal came around and hit my calf. I mounted again and this time took off down the hill pedalling wildly. Then I remembered what my new friend Emil said, “Don’t go too hard a first.” So I eased up on the pedals and reached to the down- tube and shifted into a higher gear.
As I approached my house I sped up again, but no- body was looking. As I rounded the curve by Paynter’s Bay I could feel my legs getting stiff, but I kept going. I almost lost it on the tight turn after the bridge at Leith, but hung on. The climb after Leith got harder and harder until I almost stopped… “Downshift you fool!” I said to myself as I fumbled with the shifter on the downtube.
Somehow I made it to the top and a fellow with his arm pointing directed me to turn and head back down the hill. My legs felt like rubber bands as I turned. I had to put my foot down. It was a welcome relief to coast down the hill. On the other hand I was going faster then I was comfortable with on this old bargain basement bike.
I braked as I came to the curve before the bridge at Leith and floated around without falling. As I headed back toward Hobart, I could feel my hands, arms and shoulders starting to freeze up. My lungs were in my mouth and I wasn’t sure I could make it. Nonetheless I did cross the line amid a few cheers. Laura claimed that my under 30 minute time was very good for a first timer. I was buoyed! I pedalled home like I had accomplished something.
The next week I showed up at the time trials again and the week after. Then I tried a Monday Road Ride… I have been with the club ever since. Thank you Laura and Emil for your encouraging words.
A bicycle made for racing in Owen Sound
by Andrew Armitage
Andrew gave me permission to use this article a few years before he passed away. Ed.
This column appeared in The Sun Times, Friday, September 7, 2007
The bicycle had been around for nearly half a century before the first high wheeler rattled down Poulett Street in Owen Sound in 1889. Alfred J. Frost, resplendent in knickerbockers and deerstalker capo, rode perched high on his Ordinary.
A good five feet above the hard-packed street, he waved to the citizens of the town. Frost, a sometime inventor whose 1901 automobile would be only the third to be built in Canada, was a progressive thinker who believed firmly in progress. Bicycles, automobiles, and motorboats were among the passions that would occupy his life.
Frost had seen his first marvelous two-wheeled machine in Toronto’s Queen’s Park. He simply had to have one to take home to Owen Sound. Alfred returned with his new bicycle, learning to ride it in Matthew’s Park where he was hotly pursued by entranced boys and girls, concerned parents, and a pack of fascinated dogs. Frost didn’t really mind the attention, reminding the gathered spectators that the high front wheel was designed to thwart cuff-chomping canine.
Alfred Frost soon became somewhat of a bicycling fool. In spite of his growing reputation for furious riding, he inspired his fellow man to join him in this self-propelled miracle of transportation. Within a few months, the maple lanes of Owen Sound were host to phalanxes of wheelmen, mustachioed and serious, peddling furiously in an attempt to stay upright.
The first pedal cycle had been built in 1839 by a lowland Scot, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, a blacksmith of Courthall, Dumfrieshire. In the 50 years that followed, the bicycle graduated from a curiosity to a full-fledged fad. The awkward and somewhat dangerous contraption became a national mania in Great Britain.
Tens of thousands were built. They took to the streets of London and Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool. The invention of macaam highways (John Loudon McAdam was also a lowland Scots inventor) paved the way for bicycle touring. Soon, the “wheel” rivaled the horse on the byways and thoroughfares of the country.
The bicycle captured the world. The “boneshaker,” the “timber truck,” the “treadmill,” as it was variously nicknamed, clattered across the pavements of Paris, Rome, Berlin, New York and Toronto. The machine with its ill-proportioned profile caught the popular imagination, remaining King of the Highway until the first four-wheeled automobile came huffing and puffing along.
Bicyclists were not loners. They formed cycling clubs that became social organizations for the wheelmen and their machines. Bicycles were not inexpensive. At first, only the well-to-do could afford them. The T. Eaton Company listed an American Rambler in their 1892 Fall/Winter catalogue at $175.00. A few decades later, a Model T Ford would bring a price of only a few hundred dollars more than the Rambler.
In Owen Sound, the cycling fraternity to belong to was the Crescent Club. The membership of this wheel association read like a “who’s who” of the most prosperous in town. There was Frost, of course, and Rutherford, Inglis, Chisholm, Creighton, Eaton, Harrison, Miller, McKay and the highly touted “invincible” wheelman, Robert McDowall. The Crescents, in their smart striped red and black jerseys, were among the most envied “sports” in the port community.
The bicycle, like every other form of basic transportation such as the chariot, horse, and steamboat, began its life as a better way to travel from here to there. However, getting there first and fastest soon became an object in itself. Competition gave the world of the wheel a whole new perspective. Before long, the bicycle match joined the baseball game, the horse race, and the circus as a spectacle to see.
Crescent Club riders and cycles were soon boarding the daily train to provincial races in Toronto, London, Guelph and Woodstock. Bob McDowall and Edward Miller were strong wheelmen, finishing high among the leaders in every race they entered.
In 1893, the Crescent executive decided that it was time to bring a major wheel race to Owen Sound. It would be an invitational competition with the best riders in Ontario entered. By mid-July, enthusiasm for the upcoming Owen Sound cycle races was running high. One thousand dollars in prize money was announced as permission to close off Poulett and other key town streets gained an appreciative nod from a tourist-minded town council.
On August 18th, super-cyclists Bob McDowall and Ed Miller rode out to plot the course for the 15-mile main event. McDowall had the certification published in the Owen Sound Advertiser. “I hearby certify that I have measured the distance for the 15 mile Road Bicycle Race to be run on Garafraxa Road Aug. 24 and find that the distance from the top of Holme’s Rock to the top of Thorpe’s Hill near Chatsworth and return to race course to a point near the Cricket booth (Victoria Park) is an exact fifteen miles.”
August 23rd and 24th were race days. Promoters had planned on crowds numbering in the thousands. Tightrope walkers performed high above Poulett Street as the glorious days of racing got under way with a gigantic parade.
On Wednesday, the crowds began to gather. The town band welcomed two excursion steamers while the morning train arrived filled with spectators and cyclists. Additional riders appeared pumping their way from Collingwood, Orangeville and Guelph. By racetime, 5,000 spectators had jammed the Pleasure Grounds.
Over 50 entries were on hand representing Ontario’s cycling clubs. Toronto had sent the Wanderers, the Athaneum, and especially the Royal Canadian Bicycle Club, the most feared of the big city’s wheelmen. Mounted on newly designed cycles, the city riders had