Robert 'Bicycle Bob' Silverman, co-founder of Montreal bicycle-advocacy group, Le Monde à bicyclette in 1975.Courtesy of MAB
Creative, opinionated and tenacious, Montreal native Robert Silverman spent much of his adult life waging war against what he called the “auto-cracy,” in which cars always trumped bicycles as the premier mode of transportation.
Known as “Bicycle Bob,” Mr. Silverman, slight of frame, a poet and maker-upper of words, helped found in 1975 what would be called Le Monde à bicyclette, a group of “anarcyclists” determined to fight against Montreal’s dominant car culture. Their vision was of a city with a network of bike lanes people would use to go to work and home again, do grocery shopping, pick up the kids from daycare and visit friends and family.
Not for him the racing bicycles of today, with carbon fibre wheels and ever-light frames. Instead, he rode an old beater, utilitarian and homely, with nary a clip-in pedal or high-tech speed and cadence sensor in sight. John Symon, who met Mr. Silverman at a pick-up volleyball game in Jeanne Mance Park in the late 1980s and is writing the older man’s biography, said he would never have been able to tell the difference, anyway.
“Once, we went for an outing and we put our bikes down to rest, my more hi-tech model next to his piece of junk,” Mr. Symon recalled. “Bob looked at them lying on the ground and asked, in all seriousness, ‘Which one is mine?’”
Somehow, Mr. Symon continued, his friend, who moved to Val David in the Laurentians region north of Montreal in the early 2000s, managed to meld a mellow personality with strong opinions about everything from the medical, pharmaceutical and oil industries to volleyball, for which he wanted to rewrite the rules of the game.
“He wanted to ban two-on-two matches, for example,” Mr. Symon said. “He was welcoming and brought people in to play, and he had a good serve. But he often didn’t wear his glasses, so had problems seeing the ball.”
Mr. Silverman, who was 88 years old when he died on Feb. 20 in a Sainte-Agathe hospice following a series of health setbacks, never lost sight of the cause when it came to cycling, glasses or not.
From painting a strip on a stretch of road to denote a “bike lane” (an unheard-of concept in Quebec in the 1970s and 80s), to staging die-ins and having activists, who were barred from taking their bicycles into the metro, pointedly haul things on that took up much more space, including a papier-mâché hippopotamus, the stunts were legion – and effective.
Perhaps his most creative effort, an attempt to get people to recognize that cyclists had no way to cross the bridges that spanned the St. Lawrence River to the South Shore, was when he dressed as Moses, complete with staff and the “Ten Bicycle Commandments,” and called in stentorian tones for the powers-that-be to part the waters.
“When I became a bicycle advocate, for the first time I had a reason to live,” Mr. Silverman told journalist and Forbes contributor Carlton Reid in 2017. “I have dedicated my life to making the world a better place via a simple solution: the bike.”
Robert Silverman was born in Montreal on Nov. 30, 1933, the elder of Bert and Florence Silverman’s two children. The father owned a successful insurance company and the parents raised Bob and his sister, Rona, in comfortable Snowdon, a neighbourhood on the west side of the city.
After graduating from the High School of Montreal, he attended Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University), but left without earning a degree. Instead, he was a seeker, a self-declared Trotskyist who was constantly searching for a better, more just world.
At the age of 25, his father helped him open the Seven Steps Bookstore on Stanley Street in the heart of downtown Montreal, named for the front steps of the row house where it was located. From the get-go, it was far from a money-making proposition, for Mr. Silverman tended to “loan” books to customers, as the late Nick Auf der Maur, a friend and former employee, once wrote in a column in the Montreal Gazette.
Mr. Auf der Maur also noted that Mr. Silverman assiduously avoided the accountant his father had hired to help balance the books. Soon, the store went bankrupt, and he was on to his next adventure, namely, moving to Cuba, where he taught English in Havana during the week and spent weekends cutting sugar cane in the countryside.
One weekend, he found himself working in a field next to Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary, physician and guerrilla leader; they shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.
Yet, although Mr. Silverman was a great fan of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, he was expelled from Cuba two years after he got there, on the grounds that he had brought anti-Soviet literature into the country.
Back in Montreal, after his first, short marriage to Edith Rosenkranz ended in divorce, Mr. Silverman left again, first for a kibbutz in Israel, then to travel around Europe. While in France, he rediscovered the joy and usefulness of riding a bike, which, in turn, would give the rest of his life focus and direction. More than any of his other causes – including the anti-Vietnam War movement, pressing for nuclear disarmament and fighting for the rights of Palestinians – cycling was his heart and soul, a way to keep moving forward while setting down roots.
Disowned by his father, he simply made a new life for himself, in a series of apartments in Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood, owning little but with a fierce raison d’être. “Killed by a car, reborn by a bike: That’s the story of my life,” he once wrote.
He learned to be savvy. After starting what he initially called Citizens on Cycles, Mr. Silverman realized the movement needed to expand beyond its anglophone base if it was to make any inroads in a city where cyclists took their lives in their hands whenever they ventured out. When he read an article by francophone sovereigntist Jacques Desjardins in a newsletter of what is now known as Vélo-Québec, he knew exactly what to do: bring in people who believed as he did, no matter their language or politics. Thus, Le Monde à bicyclette was born.
Said Mr. Desjardins: “We went to a meeting in his apartment, complete with old bikes lying outside. Inside, there was lot of smoke and a group of Jewish anglophone anarchists, many of whom didn’t speak French. We didn’t speak English very well, either. It was two worlds colliding, the Martians and the earthlings.”
But it worked. Mr. Silverman made a point of attending practically every city council and relevant committee meeting for at least 10 years, listening, cajoling and offering often unsolicited advice. Gradually, Montreal came around, building protected bike paths that people use year-round, including two that cross over the St. Lawrence River to the South Shore, and introducing a seasonal bike-sharing program that has served as an example to other cities.
His legacy is there for all to see: a city culture changed, an international reputation as one of the world’s most bike-friendly cities and a new group, Encore du monde à bicyclette, dedicated to building upon the advances of the original group and spreading the gospel of cycling to a new generation.
Mr. Desjardins noted there is talk of honouring Mr. Silverman’s memory by naming the bike path that was recently dedicated along the Rue St-Denis corridor after him. The route crosses a bike path named for Claire Morissette, a fellow activist who was the creative yin to his theatrical yang. She died in 2007.
“Isn’t that a lovely idea?” Mr. Desjardins asked. “I hope it happens.”
Mr. Silverman leaves his sister, Rona Klein, and several nieces and nephews.