Pedal to the metal
Ben Kaplan, National Post
Published: Saturday, July 12, 2008

A few mornings ago at Fort York, former mayor David Crombie addressed Steve Parish, the mayor of Ajax, councillor Jennifer O'Conell of Pickering and 170 or so bicyclists.

"You're all at the best under-reported event in the province," said Crombie, as the cyclists, gathered for the Toronto leg of the Great Waterfront Trail adventure tour, rung their bells in applause.

"What you'll see today, next year, I can assure you, will be very different," said Crombie, Toronto's mayor from 1972 to 1978 and founder of Waterfront Regeneration Trust, a volunteer group dedicated to beefing up Lake Ontario's paths. "Yes the money is here," he said, "and yes, the money's approved."

The event, an eight-day, 680-kilometre bike ride from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Quebec that attracted people from as far as Virginia and Ohio, was organized to draw

attention to the waterfront and announce a $1.8-million donation to the foundation from CIBC.

"Today we'll be going 81 kilometres so I'm using the speeches to stretch," said a woman, 59, here on her summer vacation and groggy on Day 3 of the cycling after spending the night in the fort's barracks.

After a few more words from Crombie, Parish and O'Conell, 19-year-old Ned Gallagher from Toronto lit the cannon and sent the bikers peddling along the lake toward Ajax.

Once the cyclists were off, Crombie led a walk along the waterfront for the public. About a dozen men and women armed with cameras accompanied him from Bathurst Quay to Parliament Street; he was politician, joker and raconteur.

"I don't know the whole history of the park, but you can Google it," he said while in Ireland Park, site of the Toronto Irish Famine Memorial, a mini-monument in sleet rock hidden in the shadows of the empty silos of the Canadian

Malting Company at the bottom of Bathurst Street beneath Queen's Quay. (Crombie later apologized for his skills as a tour guide.)

"I'm leading you into the water," he said, telling colourful stories all the while, including one about houses being floated along the water from Algonquin Island to the island airport in 1937 and another about fly balls hit by the Maple Leaf baseball club ending up in the lake.

Stopped at the Toronto Music Garden, at Spadina and Queen's Quay, Crombie reminisced about the community resistance thwarted by an outside guest.

"I remember Yo-Yo Ma standing right here, playing for residents," Crombie said. "Opposition to the park pretty well ended there."

As the mayor of Ajax and the councillor from Pickering pedalled ever onward, the ex-mayor defended his involvement with the waterfront at the Spadina bridge.

"The waterfront is like a church or the mafia," he said. "You can't get out once you're in."

National Post