I'm a biker, cyclist, call it what you will - I can and do ride my bike to work, not every day- but once weather permits, a couple times a week. I start out in the cool of night, the sky washed dark with stars singing the night, swirling in a heavens still stained with sound and smell and the sweet, intoxicating drifting perfume of lilacs in the Spring night.
My bike is festooned with a ridiculous array of flashing lights; red ones that flash spasmodically on fender and along the back of my seat, halogan which shines bright on the road which flows before me, red reflectors flashing on the sturdy tires and more flashing red light at the back - and front of my helmet. For I know that each morning I pull out of my driveway and onto the common roadway, I am courting potential harm.
The reality is that Toronto continues to be a car city, one dedicated to the worship of 4 wheels, and heavy exhaust and impatient courtiers who swerve and curse and see as their divine right complete and utter dominion over the concrete byways of a city that in truth belongs to everyone.
Cyclists are cursed, maligned, despised, reviled and seen as upstarts claiming what is not theirs. Lip service on the part of city government promise and never deliver on safe egress for cyclists along roads they too are paying for those roads through the same taxes levied on the driver.
Just last night, my youngset daughter came in, shaken and disturbed, having spent 45 minutes at the corner of Brimley and Danforth talking to police. A little boy, riding his bike, training wheels attached, following his older brothers on the green light crossing Danforth was struck (thankfully not fatally) by a car driven by an impatient motorist who felt it was his divine right to turn right on a red ....
In the 5 years since I took up biking, I have been struck 4 times- 2 of those hits resulting in me being knocked off my bike and damage to my bike - both times with drivers who sped away without even stopping to see if I was ok. I have had bruised legs as impatient cars pushed me into curbs and light standards, have been sworn at, cursed, had cigarettes thrown at me, been spit at and cut off. I have dodged doors opening suddenly into the badly constructed bike lanes, wiped out on gravel as someone accelerated out of laneways and once, when a car ran a red light, been struck and airborne, ended up in the seat of a convertible waiting to turn right.
Darcy Shepperd was by all accounts, an angry man. A man with serious alcohol and maybe drug issues. A violent man.
Michael Bryant on the other hand, with his spin machine, Navigator influencing, prodding, moulding and creating his public persona, is displayed as an upright citizen, simply coming home from a night out with his lovely wife, vilely attacked by a maddened courier...
A maddened courier whose bike was indisputably HIT by Bryant.
An already angry man who RIGHTFULLY reacted when Bryant in his fancy car, impatient by all accounts with lane restrictions tried to get by.
It is inarguable that Bryant HIT Sheppard's bike.
Having been hit, I know exactly how he felt.
PISSED.
We know how vulnerable we are.
Cars are big suckers. Cars are heavy. Cars are STEEL. Cyclists on the other hand are flesh and blood, fragile, tender flesh easily hurt by 2 tons of weapon driven by idiots and fools who see as their divine right exclusive access to the roads.
So Sheppard went after Bryant. and WHAT?
That exonerates him from scraping Sheppard off against a fire hydrant like a piece of dirt?
Somehow, in all the justifications, the spin doctoring about "saintly" Bryant, about the gossip mongering pruient recitation over and over of Sheppard's troubled past, somehow, in all that cesspool of justification, the reality that a man was KILLED because he got ANGRY that another man threatened him with a 2 ton machine has been been lost.
Bryant was the man responsible for bringing in Breed-specific legislation.
I guess he saw in Sheppard just another cur to be put down - for the "potential" harm he MIGHT have done. Did anyone notice in all the allegations of violence against his person, NO ONE has reported that Bryant was in any way bruised or cut?
I guess congratulations are due to Navitagor for successfully spining another fairy tale.
Darcy,- your ghost will not rest - for justice is absent.
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