Winter in Montreal comes quickly and brutally, often on the same day. One November morning it’s warm and great biking weather, then at lunch it starts to snow, by evening the bike path has 15 centimeters of accumulated white stuff and your tiny, skinny tires have no traction. Your bike is a suicide machine.
When this happens, all you can do is leave your snow bound bike locked up against something solid. With a good lock, you can safely leave your bike out for days on end, and this wouldn’t be a problem in the summer. But winter is a different story. There are predators about.
The first snow fall is always pretty. Everything looks clean and white, and fluffy. Then, the second and third pile up, but soon, once the snow gets deep, the predators hit the sidewalks and the bike paths. They ostensibly are clearing the snow; but in reality, they are looking for the lonely, orphan bike, the bike that has been abandoned by its owner, the bike left to fend for itself over the long winter.
These are their preferred victims. These predators, disguised as small snow ploughs enjoy nothing more than to take a bite out of a front tire, bending it into an almost impossible angle. Or maybe they hunger for a handle bar, or rear tire… anything that is an easy victim.
Once these bikes become winter casualties, their fate is sealed. They quickly become rusting corps, often further vandalized, or cannibalized for their remaining useable parts.
In the spring we see them, rusting hulks, on the sidewalk… But the city will take care of it… they have a group of people for that, much like in the middle ages, when they walked the streets with carts calling out, “Bring out your dead…. Bring out your dead.”
Author’s Note: This photo was taken along the de Maisonneuve Street Bike path, near St-Mathieu.
Sad bikes indeed. We need an eco tax to make sure you donate your bike not abandon it. Winter storage should be required in parking garages for a nominal fee. Unclaimed bikes could be sold for profit.
I don’t see the cart but the guy walking by sure looks spooky!