You are the people who don’t take advantage of your glide in breast stroke. Who walk in the lane rather than swimming. Who do some sort of head’s down dog-paddle. Or who do very short strokes and over-cross your arms in freestyle. Or who don’t follow every movement in aqua fit class. Or take it easy instead of pushing yourself throughout.
But you show up every single session and do your workout, whatever it may be. Already I recognize and expect to see you when I’m lifeguarding.
If I were you, I would welcome coaching or lessons because improving my strokes and speed are constant goals. But you seem happy to be moving through the water, and that’s the important thing.
You demonstrate discipline I don’t have, just by showing up every day.
Older women smiling and laughing during a water aerobics class. Photo from oldldadygains.com
Bring on the Bay, an annual open-water swimming event in Ottawa, has a unique feature to accommodate swimmers who might otherwise not be able to participate: swim angels.
The swim angels program has been running since 2016. I first learned about it when I had foot surgery but wanted to swim despite my lack of training and fears about foot cramps. My friend Nadine volunteered to be my angel. It was a huge comfort to know she was there, ready to call for help should I need it, or just keep me going when I wasn’t sure about my abilities.
You can read more about the swim angel program here, and its origins as a way to help one swimmer with epilepsy achieve her goals. Since then, angels have supported people with a variety of disabilities and medical conditions, but also those who are simply anxious about open water swimming.
Last year, I decided it was time to become an angel myself. I wrote about it here. It was so much fun that I’m back again and looking forward to swimming with Irene, the mum of my swimmer from last year.
This year’s swim angel crew, some 25 swimmers standing or sitting on a dock and holding their swim floats, with the Royal Lifesaving Society instructors who coached us on how to manage emergencies and keep ourselves and our swimmers safe.Swim angels show off their “wings” in the Ottawa River.
This Fall my friend Aimee decided to give underwater hockey a try so I decided to go watch a game. I watched the game, I looked up the rules, and I’m still not sure what the heck was going on!
It is similar to ultimate frisbee in that it’s a mixed gender game, with a minimum of two women per team. There wasn’t an obvious coach or referee. You try to move a round object so it goes through a goal marked by a couple of bricks or similar objects on the ground (or bottom of the pool). There is no goalie. You can have extra players who sub in. People of all ages and shapes seem to play. It’s officially a no -contact sport.
There is minimal protective equipment: goggles with ear protectors like water polo players use, a gardening or similar glove to protect the “stick” hand is optional, and some players appear to have a mouth protector thingy on their snorkels.
Aimee is in the water at the side of the pool. She is wearing her black cap, goggles and blue glove. There are three little “hockey sticks” on the deck along with her red water bottle and a construction cone I cannot explain.
I looked up the rules and that’s where things got wild. Some rules say 6 players per side with two spares per team. Others say four spares. There can be two 10 minute halves with a 5 minute break. Or two 15 minute halves with a 3 minute break.
The puck weighs about 1.5 kg apparently, but I never actually saw it in the water. Instead, what I saw was something that looked a bit like a fish feeding frenzy moving around the pool. Does the puck get passed? I have no idea! Who won? Also no idea, and judging by how the players came out of the water, winning was the least important part of the sport.
A group of swimmers in a swimming pool. Some are floating, others are diving with their flippers in the air, and at least one is completely under water.
Update: cleanup afterwards involved a bunch of poles that maybe marked boundaries and to keep the puck from sliding out of bounds? The pool was shared with a fitness class on one side and a swim class on the other. The metal things in the picture below are used for the goals, and the red discos with handles are the pucks. Why did they have so many? I haven’t a clue.
It looks like fun though. I’m always up for a bit of goofiness in the water. It looks like I can sign up for three trial sessions before making a commitment, so I might just do that in the Fall.
After the ride though, our local organizer commented that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the name. Did it exclude people who didn’t want to dress up, or didn’t feel they had anything fancy enough to wear?
That led to a lively discussion among participants about the merits of dressing in different ways as a safety measure. Many of us had found that being super femme was protective. Drivers tended to give us more space. One woman noted that going from a gender-neutral coat to something more fitted and colourful had a noticeable impact on drivers around her.
However, this doesn’t always work. Female cyclists face harassment and bad driving at twice the rate of male cyclists, according to one study. They are particularly vulnerable to close passes and dooring because they tend to keep to the side of the road. But if they take the lane, they are sometimes threatened by aggressive drivers. Anecdotally, this was the experience in our group too.
Even within our group, some felt more vulnerable than others. The local organizer of Black Girls Do Bike rides said there just aren’t many women like her on the road so it always feels a bit uncomfortable. The woman who organizes rides focused on safety for kids (and brought her two along). The trans women who arrived at the last possible moment, hung back on the ride, and didn’t join the discussion until they heard us talking about “female presenting” cyclists.
My very unscientific answer to whether we need a Fancy Women Bike Ride is yes. It’s not just for women in places where riding is relatively safe for them. It’s for women who are marginalized in our community, and for women in communities where women are marginalized. It’s for women who don’t want to be fancy but want to be safe moving around on a bicycle. And it’s for women like me who see being fancy as part of their subversive feminism and celebrate the pink.
A group of women on the Ottawa ride stopped for a picture with their bikes in an urban area. They are wearing regular clothes and shoes instead of riding gear and sneakers.Bicycles lined up beside an ice cream truck where we ended our ride. feminism, fitness and ice cream – it doesn’t get any better than this.
Dian Harper lives and swims (and cycles) in Ottawa.
I thought about celebrating all the teams who made it out of the opening round, but what I really want to celebrate is the surprising women who showed the world that women’s soccer is becoming increasingly diverse and interesting.
Not just teams were new. There were also a couple of individual firsts. Nouhaila Benzina of Morocco is the first woman to play in a hijab at this level. She is being hailed as a role model for Muslim women everywhere, and especially those in France, where wearing a hijab is forbidden while playing sports.
Nouhaila Benzina in her Atlas Lionesses uniform.
She’s not the only hijabi though – keep an eye out for Heba Saadieh, the first ever Palestinian referee (male or female) who also wears a hijab.
Heba Saadieh making a call.
With powerhouses including the USA, Canada, Brazil and Germany out, the rest of the tournament looks rather Eurocentric. I’m not sure who I’ll cheer for now – maybe Japan because they have a very Barbie-coloured away jersey, and I love a subversive feminist icon reference, even if it was not the Japanese intention.
Japanese team celebrates after a goal. Photo by Marty MELVILLE / AFP)
My Twitter friend Patty (@pattyboge), who is very active in the Winnipeg bike community, shared a couple of thoughts about biking and feminism this week.
First was an excellent commencement speech at Smith College given by Reshma Saujani on imposter syndrome. “Imposter syndrome is modern day Bike Face, just another attempt to hold women back. Just ride your bicycle, pursue what you want to pursue.
“Imposter syndrome is just two made up words on the page. Start pedalling, feel the sun in your face, feel the wind in your hair, feel the joy, feel the freedom, feel the love.”
Sam wrote about Bicycle Face way back in 2013. She also interviewed lawyer David Isaac in 2020 about how safe infrastructure and women on bikes. His key point was that safe infrastructure that connects to places where women want to go is key to getting women riding bikes. And it is a feminist issue because it can make cities more equitable.
That brings me to Patty’s second thought: « Women’s Rights activist Susan B. Anthony says it best ‘Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel, the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood.”
Patty’s response to all the people who pass two close and try to intimidate women to try to get us “off the road, B!&%!” is to say “we can’t and we won’t stop. Our bikes are our freedom”.
One of my favourite pictures of Patty, swiped from her Twitter feed. She is wearing a hot pink mini dress, sunglasses and a pink helmet with a tiara. She is riding a white e-bike with a front basket decorated with flowers. And of course, she has a huge smile.
On Saturday I joined my first-ever Critical Mass Ride in Ottawa. These are rides where large groups of people on bikes get together and ride through the streets as a way of pushing for safer infrastructure and normalizing using bicycles as a regular form of transportation. It turns out they are also a lot of fun.
A crowd of people with their bicycles is starting to gather on a courtyard near a row of flagpoles, under a cloudy sky.
About 250 people showed up at the start point from across Ottawa and Gatineau. There were people on racing bikes, hybrids, folding bikes, e-bikes, and cargo bikes. There were people older than me and kids on their bikes. There were dogs and kids in bikes. There were even a couple of supportive walkers and a guy on a skateboard.
As the crowd continues to build, a woman with her child in a cargo bike greets one of the dogs who rode in another cargo bike, and his owner.
The crowd rode in front of Parliament Hill and down to a road along the Canal that is sometimes opened for active transport on weekends.
A large group of people riding bikes waits at a street light on a treed road.
We ended up at the heart of the Tulip Festival near Dow’s Lake, about 8 km from where we had started.
More people and bikes at the end of the ride. a few are applauding and one person has her arms raised in celebration. You can see the lake to the right and trees and a food truck in the background. More people with their bikes, plus a bed of tulips and some trees (including a crabapple full of pink blossoms) with office buildings in the distance.
I ended up getting to meet people I only knew through Twitter, connected with folks working on active transportation through other groups, got to check out a street with new temporary bike lanes, and explored part of the river partway and a new footbridge I had never used before. It was a great reminder of how easy it is to get around by bike, too: my total distance for the day was about 22 km.
There are already requests for more Critical Mass Rides in Ottawa. Others are doing it too. I have heard about rides in Hamilton, Winnipeg and Vancouver and several places in the UK this week alone. The Hamilton ride is a protest following the death of an 81 year-old cyclist last week, and the Vancouver ride is to protest the removal of hugely popular bike lanes in favour of another car lane through Stanley Park.
Whether you are a cyclist or a person who bikes, walks or rolls, you may want to keep an eye open for similar events where you live. Or organize one yourself! It’s just one part of the advocacy we need to make streets safer for everyone and help fight climate change, but it’s also fun and a great way to be active.
Recently, I discovered that the City of Ottawa uses anonymized, aggregated Strava data as a data source for determining where bicycle infrastructure is needed. Although the National Capital Commission has established a good network of recreational pathways in and around Ottawa, we desperately need more safe streets for people who ride bikes for regular transportation.
Apparently there is some way that adjustments are made to accommodate for the fact that most cyclists don’t use Strava or other tracking apps. I don’t understand all the science behind it, but I know just enough about statistics to know that sample bias is an issue, and I know that most of the people who use Strava are athletic types tracking longer rides. People using their bikes for short trips to do everyday chores may not use Strava at all, or not think to turn it on because it doesn’t “count”.
Since I’m a big advocate of cycling for everyone, I have started tracking every single ride, no matter how short. My aim is to mess with the city by skewing the data as much as possible in favour of shorter utilitarian trips, and show where better infrastructure is needed.
How am I messing with myself? Since I started tracking faithfully on April 17, I have racked up just over 105 km. I have become the local legend on segments leading to my work. My speed is trending downwards and I have set a couple of personal best times.
I have also become more determined than ever to bike everywhere possible, and my definition of what is possible has gotten bigger. Two of those rides were unusually long for me, but turned out to be perfectly manageable: one was a 13 km ride from the blood donor clinic, and the other was 15 km to and from Costco.
The blood donor ride was fun as I got to explore quirky neighbourhoods full of small businesses that I find hard to get to by public transit. I even rode across the bridges to and from Gatineau, the best part of my commute when I worked over there.
The Alexandra Bridge has a lovely wide section for bicycles and pedestrians. Here you can see several walkers and runners on the bridge, with Ottawa in the distance. Photo: Trevor Pritchard, CBC
That Costco ride was an important stepping stone for me. The routes proposed by Google were all along busy roads but I remembered quieter recreational paths that made for a longer but safer ride. However, I did need to navigate one notoriously busy road with unclear painted bike lane markings (and only 1 block of protected lane).
Costco itself had the usual car-filled parking lot and the bike racks were way in the back of the building, so I locked up to a sign near the front. It was easy to pack everything into two panniers, and I didn’t need the bungee cords, extra bags and my knapsack I had brought along just in case I felt the need to train for the #carryshitolympics. Now I know that a mostly-pleasant half hour ride each way is all it takes to get to a store I generally avoid.
My bicycle with loaded blue and black panniers, chained to a sign and red-painted bollard. There is a row of bollards protection the sidewalk from a sea of parked cars, and one illegally parked car right behind my bike.
I don’t think of myself as a particularly introspective person, so I am a little surprised to discover that my preferred reading lately is mostly in support of my thinking for this blog.
On the go, I have:
Feminist City: A Field Guide, by Leslie Kern
“You Just Need To Lose Weight” And 19 Other Myths About Fat People, by Aubrey Gordon
The Book of The City of Ladies, by Christine de Pizan
I Just finished The Once and Future Sex , by Eleanor Janega.
I also participated in a Zoom panel on Finding Equity in The Low Car City, with Chris Bruntlett and Melissa Bruntlett. My next two acquisitions will be their books Curbing Traffic and Building The Cycling City.
And because all posts need a picture, here is my new bike, acquired this weekend. It has enough cargo bike features to make it really useful for running errands, and it has a step-through frame and a skirt guard on the chain so I can more easily cycle in a dress.
Black bicycle with a wooden box on the front, and a basket and panniers on the back.
I have been involved in a lot of conversations about active transportation in the last few weeks. And about the reasons both kids and seniors may be less active than they would like. And Mount Alison University geograph Professor Leslie Kern talking about her book Feminist City (my copy is on order).
And far too many rants where cyclists were blamed for being struck by cars, articles were written about pedestrians hitting cars (the cars drove away – never the drivers – and the pedestrians were hospitalized). The worst was blaming an older man for daring to go for on walk on a bare sidewalk in regular shoes, after he broke his ankle when trying climb over a windrow left by a snowplow.
What if we designed our living spaces so that more of us that are enticed to walk, bike and take transit, because the more that they do, the better it is for everyone?
Women in Urbanism Canada points out that women make up more than half of Canada’s aging population, so building age-friendly cities must be gender-inclusive. Women are more likely to outlive their partners, live in poverty, earn less, own less property, and have children and grandchildren to care for. They are more likely to suffer from mobility-related disabilities and physical impairments. They may also outlive their ability to drive. They need affordable and well-connected public transportation, areas to exercise and socialize and homes that allow them to live, independently, and with easy access to services resources and community amenities.
And the city of Ottawa, in a zoning review paper currently under discussion notes that “the impacts of car-dependency are most acutely felt by women, youth, elderly people, low-income people, and people with disabilities, as these are all people who are less likely to have access to or afford personal vehicles. A mobility-rich neighbourhood is a 15-minute neighbourhood where kids can walk to school and recreation, where people have the option to run a quick errand on foot, and people of all incomes can affordably access their needs.”
So what would that activity-friendly neighbourhood look like? It would have public transit, wide sidewalks and bike spaces (maybe even car-free), with benches, bathrooms, trees for shade, meeting places and playgrounds, plus a variety of shops and services close to home.
A street with dense housing, trees, playground, bike racks, and people of all ages walking or cycling. The drawing comes from The cover of Curbing Traffic, a book on the human case for fewer cars by Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett.
For winter in Canada, I would add ploughed sidewalks and bike lanes. Sweden has already led the way on this. Following a gender analysis of its street clearing practices, Swedish cities began clearing sidewalks first, because they discovered that women were more likely to walk. There were three times as many injuries from falling on slippery streets as there were from driving, and the cost of treating those injuries far outweighed the city of snow clearing.
For millions of short journeys, the right tool for the job ought to be walking or cycling, but the way too many streets are designed makes this a difficult choice. Cars go too fast, there are no safe spaces for bicycles, and sidewalks have obstacles including high curbs, unsafe crosswalks, and buttons to beg for a pedestrian light that my not even be accessible to all users.
That’s a shame, because person on a bicycle can go three to four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. Equipped with this tool, humans outstrip the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well (Ivan Illich, Energy & Equity, 1973).
Brent Toderian, the former chief planner for the city of Vancouver, has written that “the recent Paris transformation of key streets to add bike infrastructure is intensely pragmatic – more mobility choice and more trips using a lot less space, lower public cost, lower emissions, less pollution, better public health, etc.”
All this infrastructure is not just a feminist concern. It can also have a real impact on our health. Recently there was a meta-analysis of the impact of moderate physical activity on health. According to the report I read, about one in ten deaths could have been prevented with a little as eleven minutes of moderate physical activity a day. I’ll leave it to Catherine Womack to assess the claims; why I thought was important for this blog was the final quote:
´Dr Leandro Garcia, of Queen’s University Belfast, emphasised that moderate activity did not have to involve what people normally thought of as exercise, such as sports or running. “For example, try to walk or cycle to your work or study place instead of using a car, or engage in active play with your kids or grandkids,” he said.´
Imagine if we had safe and accessible places to do that…
Diane Harper lives in Ottawa. She has been a commuter cyclist for over 20 years.
