Activities Beyond the Academy
For 35 years I have been a member of the Toronto Olympic Club, one of Canada's leading distance running clubs that trains Canada's young athletes, and sends them to provincial, national and international events. Since winning a couple of Canadian Masters national distance titles 30 years ago, I had many lean years until entering the over 60 category since when - with fewer competitors still racing - success has occasionally come my way. And in 2023 I won silver in the World Sprint Triathlon races in Hamburg, Germany in my age group. Like many geographers, I take great interest in watching the real world on a daily basis, whether jogging, cycling or skiing. Indoor running and cycling are forms of waterboarding that are to be avoided.
A serendipitous consequence of breaking a leg in 1990 was my discovery of bicycles and cycling. All sorts of bicycles, including very old ones - hobby horses from 1819 and ordinaries (penny farthings) from the 1880s - are crammed into my bicycle museum which is opened for school and tourist visits as a display of technological evolution. Many summers included long rides eg: Trieste to Vienna (2004); Cherbourg to Roeselare, Belgium (2003); Riga to Bad Bruckenau (2005), the Hook of Holland to Neuchatel in Switzerland (2009), England to Denmark (2010), and Bratislava to Tiszacezske in Hungary (2014). In 2015 I rode with 7 others original 1869 velocipedes from Paris to Avignon to reproduce (on its 150th anniversary) the world's first long distance cycle ride - and precursor to the Tour de France. In 2017, to mark the 200th anniversary of the invention of Karl's Drais's first bicycle (the draisine), 13 of us rode reproduction draisines from Nancy to Karlsruhe covering 160 kilometers. I am Past President of the International Veteran Cycling Association which acts as the international coordinating body for 25 national veteran cycling clubs, promotes research into cycling, and holds a rally in a different country every year.
Having a basement and several sheds full of early bicycles was not a good way to present them. So with a lot of help from friends I built a small museum named the Huron Bicycle Museum in which to display them. It is located in Kincardine, Ontario and is open on demand at no charge (send an email to gnorclif@yorku.ca). It is particularly addressed to school groups. (https://www.huronbicyclemuseum.com/).
With a small group of like-minded retirees, we manage an 98 acre Saugeen Valley Conservation Authority property just north of Kincardine. Used for Nordic skiing in Winter and walking, birding and trail riding at other seasons, this was a wonderful challenge for a geographer. Managing drainage to keep trails dry, planting trees to match local ecologies, building a new "Canada 150" trail to increase connectivity (opened by Ontario's Lieutenant Governor), and making local residents aware of this conservation space have all been a rewarding challenge.
