Toronto Newspapers Reporting

I like the Bike Union's effort to turn the tragedy into an impetus that would make the roads safer. That might be the best outcome we could hope for, even though it will not undo the damage done to two lives. Road rage will never go away, but reducing chances for it to occur are a great help.

Searching for a detente

As cyclists hit the pavement in ever-increasing numbers, activists are pushing to make streets more friendly for cyclists and drivers alike
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/searc...

Anthony Reinhart

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Wednesday, Sep. 02, 2009 02:57AM EDT

The night began with a celebration of how far city cycling has come, as 150 people gathered at the Gladstone Hotel to launch Dandyhorse, an artsy magazine for Toronto's burgeoning ranks of eco-hip bike enthusiasts.

It ended with news of another cyclist dead after a conflict with a car driver, and on Bloor Street of all places: a long-contested route for its lack of bicycle lanes.

Yvonne Bambrick, head of the fledgling Toronto Cyclists Union, couldn't bring herself to spread the dark news when she received a text message four hours into the festivities.

“I decided not to share it with anyone and waited until I got home to read through the information,” Ms. Bambrick said. “I didn't want to spoil it.”

Cycling in Toronto has been on a steady roll into the mainstream in recent years, with more people taking to their two-wheelers for environmental, economic and health reasons. Ms. Bambrick's group and the new magazine are seen as signs of this maturity. At the same time, the city has lagged in providing bicycle lanes, seen as a key component in improving safety and thus heading off conflicts between cyclists, motorists and pedestrians.

“There are lots of good reasons to use a bike, and we've got more and more people making that choice,” Ms. Bambrick said, “but we really need to address proper integration of cycling into our transportation network, and we're barely scratching the surface on that right now.”

As the city provides roads for motorists, sidewalks for pedestrians and transit for commuters, many cyclists are frustrated with the lack of similar accommodation. This frustration, added to the sheer danger of sharing road space with cars and trucks, can make for an alienating mix.

“I think when you're vulnerable you tend to be a little bit more defensive,” said Matthew Blackett, a nine-months-a-year cyclist and publisher of Spacing, a magazine that fosters debate around the use of Toronto's public spaces.

That defensiveness, often taken for hot-headedness, can quickly surface in a cyclist who has just had a collision or near-collision with a car, as Mr. Blackett has learned from experience.

“It's not aggression, like coming at them, but it's just like, ‘Holy shit, did you just see what you did?' ” he said. “And I don't think that's a hothead cyclist; I think that's any person who's seen their life flash before their eyes as the rear wheel of a truck rolls by their head.

“That's going to happen, and that may be how the incident starts with Michael Bryant and the cyclist.”

High-profile tragedies aside, Mr. Blackett said the car-versus-bike rhetoric that often follows is overheated and distorts the reality: that most motorists and cyclists share the roads without incident each day.

Accommodating cyclists need not be framed as a “war on the car,” as it was this year when city council decided to replace the middle reversible lane on Jarvis Street with curbside bike lanes, Mr. Blackett said. “It's about providing safety for people.”

Nowhere has the lack of cycling lanes been more loudly and repeatedly noted than on Bloor Street, where Monday night's horror played out. Coveted for its crosstown, east-west reach and lack of streetcar tracks, the Bloor-Danforth corridor has the added benefit of a subway line beneath it, negating, to the minds of many in the cycling community, the need for on-street parking. Many merchants, however, want the parking to stay.

Adrian Heaps, a councillor who chairs the city's cycling advisory committee, said a consultant will be hired this fall and report to council next spring with a business case for bike lanes along Bloor, which he hopes will reassure merchants.

“Cyclists in this city are actually ahead of where public policy is at this point, so we're playing catch-up,” Mr. Heaps said. “However, we've made exponential gains over the last couple of years, and I'm hoping that we're going to reach that point of equilibrium over the next couple of years.”

...reflects on the bigger picture - it's also about us. Not a bad angle, in my opinion.

Michael Bryant: The story none of us can stop talking about

Beneath the facts of the Bryant case lies a bubbling cauldron of social resentments, mistrust of authority and other prejudices

Judith Timson

Last updated on Friday, Sep. 04, 2009 03:40AM EDT

It is the story that none of us can stop talking about.

The horrific Michael Bryant case, in which the former Ontario attorney-general has been charged in the death of a bicycle courier in Toronto, has been tidily summed up just about everywhere as our own Bonfire of the Vanities . It's an apt comparison, because beneath the facts lies a bubbling cauldron of social resentments, mistrust of authority and other prejudices that may well tell us more about ourselves than about anything else.

Here are those facts: Mr. Bryant, 43, Ontario's former attorney-general and a political golden boy, has been charged with criminal negligence causing death, and dangerous driving following the death of Darcy Allan Sheppard, 33, a bicycle courier with whom he had an altercation Monday evening along a tony stretch of Toronto's Bloor Street. Mr. Sheppard was seen clinging to Mr. Bryant's car and eventually died after he fell off.

It's been fascinating in this very urban tale of privilege, character, rage and tragedy to see how, like a fast-moving bowling game, certain pins have quickly been set up and just as quickly knocked down.

First, Mr. Sheppard, the bicycle courier was seen to be a wonderful funny guy, a merry warrior in the often intense subculture of bicycle couriers, a father about to get his life in order. Then he was a drunk with an alleged criminal past and “a history of violence” according to one report published in the Edmonton Sun. He had already been in the back of a police cruiser that night as cops tried to figure out what to do with him. Even though his girlfriend told the media Mr. Sheppard had been too drunk to operate his bike, the police sent him on his way.

And first Mr. Bryant, Harvard educated, recently appointed to a prestigious economic post in Toronto, was, in his sleek black Saab convertible with his accomplished wife, entertainment lawyer Susan Abramovitch at his side, viewed as the very epitome of the luxe life. The couple, celebrating their 12th wedding anniversary, surely must have been coming from some glitzy Yorkville boîte, replete with fine food and a side order of entitlement.

But according to a Toronto Star interview with “a source close to the family,” the couple had instead eaten at a modest College Street shawarma joint (the bill apparently totalled $15), then walked on the beach and finally finished up at a Greek pastry shop on the Danforth, sitting in a café, talking as the late summer night cooled. A modest date that most of us could afford. One that incomprehensibly led to Mr. Sheppard being dragged by Mr. Bryant's car as it swerved into the wrong lane. After that it would be Mr. Bryant's turn to sit in the back of a police cruiser.

These images are confusing. They may well even be irrelevant. They certainly don't conform to the rich or poor, black or white, good or bad, powerful or victimized lens through which most of us are inclined to view this tragedy.

At first people wanted to talk about the dangerous and hostile relationship between cyclists and drivers. If you were a cyclist, your initial reaction was to side with the downed bicycle courier. Not so much if you were a motorist weary of cyclers' wrath.

Then the talk turned to moral judgment. “What a story” breathed one woman I met on the street. “I see he's already hired a spin doctor and unsavoury truths about the cyclist are starting to trickle out. Typical.”

“Did the cyclist really get him in a headlock?” a friend asked. “That says viable defence to me.”

Perhaps the key question that festered as hundreds of angry cyclists emotionally demonstrated at the scene of the accident: Will Mr. Bryant get special treatment?

Listen, they could resurrect Gandhi to specially prosecute this case, but if the former attorney-general prevails in his declaration of innocence, a sizable number of citizens will believe that the case was rigged from the moment Mr. Bryant was allowed to emerge from a night in custody to face the cameras, not unshaven and rumpled like most people, but impeccably turned out in a sharp suit and shirt and tie.

How frustrating that we will have to wait at least until mid-October to know the end of this sad tale, that in the meantime we will have to deal with more ambiguity and nuance, with not knowing which details matter and which are just the easy ways we have come to typecast our heroes and villains – not to mention voice our own frustrations. We may finally have to acknowledge that notwithstanding a Harvard degree or an alcohol problem, both of these human beings gave in to the wrong emotion at the wrong time. Yet of course only one lost his life.

Told that way, we are left with no clear villain – only colossal misjudgment in a human tragedy that reminds us what we don't want to think too closely about, lest it happen to us: Our lives are completely hostage to human frailty. That isn't the satisfying moral conclusion we want to draw from this story. But it's the one we've got.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/michael-bryant-the-sto...

The papers - except Now Magazine, as pointed out elsewhere on IbikeTO - seems to hush up the existence of the surveillance video that shows Bryant as an aggressor. Thus Bryant is lauded as a victim and not the guy who intentionally rammed another vehicle, setting off the road rage incident. The worst article I have seen yet is a column by Jim Coyle in the Star that goes to absurd levels of shifting the blame.
It states:

"What seems apparent is that in the hours leading up to it Bryant did lots that was good and proper. So, too, in the confrontation.

He probably hasn't walked away from many fights. But that night, by all accounts, he tried to disengage. It's worth remembering that Bryant is a boxer. Whatever his impulse and inclination, he opted out of the bout. The other party didn't."

and here's the full article:

Menace of untreated addiction haunts deadly street encounter

Sep 11, 2009 04:30 AM
Jim Coyle

As time passes, it becomes clearer the urban nightmare that killed a courier and derailed the public career of a former Ontario cabinet minister had little to do with the hazards of cycling.

What the story of Darcy Allan Sheppard and Michael James Bryant seems more to be about is mental health and the menace of untreated addiction.

It's a story of the turbulence – in both the sufferer and most everyone he or she runs into – that such afflictions too often cause.

By no stretch was Darcy Sheppard a member of life's lucky sperm club. By the sounds of things, he was pretty damaged and, if fuelled by anger, he had a lot to be angry about.

I don't say anything about this issue with dispassion.

I know and like Bryant. He's precisely the sort of cocky, mischievous little SOB I loved to have on my team, the kind who wasn't much fun to play against.

I never met Sheppard. But it could just be that I know him, too. Other than the fact I'm almost 17 years from my last drink and Sheppard was reportedly way too close to his, we probably had much in common.

As a rule, the addicted are uncomfortable in the world at the best of times. Their natural state is restless, irritable and discontented. Sometimes, the chemical provides a fleeting sense of ease and comfort. As often as not, it produces rage and profoundly impairs impulse control.

It's not for nothing prisons are full of people with drug and alcohol problems who lost it for a moment. It's not for nothing Upton Sinclair called his 1956 classic on alcohol's use and abuse The Cup of Fury.

The collision course that brought Sheppard and Bryant into contact – the chance encounter that's both the appeal and menace of urban life – was not just compelling for the fact it involved an aboriginal man and a former minister of aboriginal affairs, a product of the streets and the beneficiary of life's good fortune.

What was notable – and is possibly germane to sorting out what went on in the relevant few seconds on which the criminal charges hinge – is that Sheppard's day had been marked by a long string of bad decisions, Bryant's by choices and actions that were responsible, even charming.

It's a particularly painful aspect of the encounter that it followed on the heels of an idyllic anniversary celebration by Bryant and his wife. Their evening was so romantic and so Toronto – shawarma on College St., the Boardwalk, baklava on the Danforth – that a film crew from Invest Toronto (the outfit Bryant left politics to head, and from which he has now resigned) should have shot it as an ad.

What seems apparent is that in the hours leading up to it Bryant did lots that was good and proper. So, too, in the confrontation.

He probably hasn't walked away from many fights. But that night, by all accounts, he tried to disengage. It's worth remembering that Bryant is a boxer. Whatever his impulse and inclination, he opted out of the bout. The other party didn't.

What happened in the critical seconds will be minutely parsed in court. What we already know is that no one gets to make the journey from cradle to grave without knowing a crucible.

Those who've had a multitude of blessings might think their well-being and sunny expectations are the natural order of things. Then something happens.

It's then we learn the most inescapable of truths. You get what life throws at you. And the worst of it usually comes straight out of the blue.

----- Original Message -----
From: XXXXXXXXX
To: jcoyle@thestar.ca
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 9:44 AM
Subject: re: Menace of untreated addiction haunts deadly street encounter - Toronto Start article, Sept. 11/09

Mr. Coyle,

Over the past weeks I have taken the opportunity to review some of the evidence in the case of Michael Bryant and Al Sheppard. After reading your article in today's paper I would challenge you to do the same.

The lofty assumptions made by you about how Al Sheppard's behaviour might have been influenced by an "addiction" are grossly out of line.

Michael Bryant may have lived a perfectly just life before the night that Al Sheppard died, but to speculate on the rationale of Bryant's actions on the evening of Monday, August 31 is misleading to say the least.

When the verdict is finally handed down on Michael Bryant I hope that the courts will have carefully considered the facts of this case; because your coverage of this story has not.

The story of Michael Bryant and Al Sheppard is not about "mental health and the menace of untreated addiction". It is however, in my opinion, the story of a man that tried to flee the scene of an accident, and then killed a man in an effort to protect his reputation, and that effort is still being exercised today.

I just mailed:

The quality of a newspaper should be measured not only by what it is reporting but also what is omitted. While some Toronto papers (e.g. NOW magazine) do present video footage from Bloor Street security cameras that show Bryant's car ramming the cyclist after he pulled into the gap in front, the Star has not included that important news yet.

If you would tell your readers about Bryant being the likely aggressor in this incidence of road rage, Jim Coyle's statement is outright absurd:
"What seems apparent is that in the hours leading up to it Bryant did lots that was good and proper. So, too, in the confrontation. He probably hasn't walked away from many fights. But that night, by all accounts, he tried to disengage. It's worth remembering that Bryant is a boxer. Whatever his impulse and inclination, he opted out of the bout. The other party didn't."

Erhard Kraus
Scarborough

To their credit, the Star is the only paper (including Now) that I've seen who've given any significant coverage to the significance of the PR firm working on this case.

For my mileage, their involvement is an egregious impropriety.

http://www.twitter.com/bryanttruths

"Attempting to defend Bryant now a very slippery slope"

I laughed at The Star subscription salesman when he came by to try and sell me that rag.

That reporter seems to think he is judge, jury and executioner. I bet he got a cheap Italian dinner and some crappy scotch from Navigator LTD for dreaming up such propaganda - Though I doubt he was given enough "free" scotch to help him sleep at night.

I don't know how many people watch Star Ray TV UHF channel 15 but their forum http://tochat.tv has this story written by Jan Pachul with a bunch of comments:

"Viewers of Star Ray TV know that we regularly run a bicycle safety program. I worked for an advertising agency in the early 90's at 2 Bloor Street West, right where this incident took place. So naturally I have a keen interest in this story.

First a quick recap for anyone that doesn’t know what I'm talking about. Michael Bryant is a former Attorney General of Ontario. He is noted for his fondness of "reverse onus" legislation and banning pit bull dogs. Ironically he is responsible for the draconian street racing law whereby upon getting charged your license is suspended, your car seized and possibly crushed without seeing a judge or nothing. In short he is an elitist fascist swine.

On Aug. 31, 2009 about 9:45 pm Michael Bryant rear ends cyclist Darcy Allan Sheppard, five seconds later he is dragging Mr. Sheppard 100 meters to his death. Click here here for a Youtube video of security camera footage that explains what happened better than I can.

Bryant set all the events in motion when he rammed Mr. Sheppard. He was the aggressor and instigator. Bryant was charged by the Toronto Police with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous driving causing death.

Bryant has proclaimed his innocence and has hired a PR firm to dig up dirt on Mr. Sheppard. Surely Bryant’s line of defense will be that Mr. Sheppard was threatening him. From a look at the video the five seconds between Bryant ramming Mr. Sheppard and then taking off doesn't seem enough time to form an opinion regarding a threat. Even more damning, I find out that Bryant is an amateur boxer. I can NOT believe that Bryant was fearful for his life.

OK, let's go with the theory that Mr. Sheppard was a threat to Mr. Bryant. I was beaten in a road rage encounter in the US a few years ago. I was cut off at high speed, I pass the car that cut me off, and give the guy the finger. The guy chases me Mad Max style for about 5 KM. Stopped at a light, the guy jumps out of his car, rips open my car door, and starts beating me while I'm inside the car. I jump out, give the guy one punch, bloody his nose, he doesn't want to fight anymore, and I split. I could have run the guy over no problem like Bryant did. It is true that I am a large man, bigger than Bryant. I chose to engage the guy in a fist fight which Bryant also could very well have done if he felt threatened. There have been rumors that Mr. Sheppard was was drunk. If true, he would have been silly putty for experienced boxer Bryant.

As one of German descent the first thing that came to my mind when I heard about this was untermenschen which is a German word for sub-humans, popularized during the Nazi era. Seems in Bryant's twisted way of thinking, Mr. Sheppard was sub-human, an untermensch undeserving of any consideration whatsoever. Witness the callous dragging of Mr. Sheppard. Mr. Sheppard may have thought that by holding on to Bryant's car, Bryant would stop like anybody else. Little did he know he was dealing with a monster, a basterd as defined by Quentin Tarantino in his new movie. In true basterd fashion Bryant racing at an estimated 90KM, used roadside objects to dislodge Mr. Sheppard finally after 100 yards bludgeoning him with a mailbox and squishing his skull with a rear tire. This isn't a scene from a Tarantino movie, this is real life. Without any regard for the condition of the untermensch (near death) Bryant drives away leaving the scene.

There have been suggestions that Bryant was in some way intoxicated. Cocaine rage comes to mind. As far as I know he was not tested for alcohol or drugs. If Bryant was sober and is capable of committing the outlandish acts we see on the video, he is even a more grotesque basterd.

Bryant’s PR firm is in overdrive planting stories showing Bryant in a favourable light; stories like “Bryant may yet overcome his tragic circumstances.” If Mr. Michael Bryant has any shred of decency, he should call off his PR Vermin, take responsibility for his actions and plead guilty to the lesser of the two charges.

I would at this time express my condolences to the family and friends of Al Sheppard. He did not deserve to die at the hands of this basterd.

In the "Unforgiven" there is a scene where Clint Eastwood is standing over a downed Gene Hackman with a shotgun aimed at his head. Hackman protests that he “doesn’t deserve to die like this,” Eastwood's reply: “deserve has got nothing to do with it. (KABOOM!)" "

These guys are considered a "pirate station' by the CRTC. I guess that government doesn't want any independent media.

I too read the Jim Coyle story and I was outraged. How can anybody in their right mind come up with such BS? Michael Bryant as a basterd? I think this story is right on!

As Herb pointed out, a more recent article shows the cyclist's perspective:

Catherine Porter of the Star has a bunch of the "Thank You" cards for drivers, a campaign by the Toronto Cyclists Union, ...

See
http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/environment/articl...
for the article.

Maybe a few other cyclists than myself have canceled the subscription to the paper and told them why. It gotta make some difference if folks pipe up when unfair reporting fans the flames....

By the way, the writer suggests to print bumper stickers with a meaningful message, as an alternative to the "thank-you" cards:

If the cycling union really wants to convert drivers, it should be printing up bumper stickers, not cards.

Mine would say: "I bike too. Be nice to cyclists."

I'd put a sticker on my Corolla, for sure!

...as in recent weeks they had some fair articles about issues related to cycling.
But today, they done it again: take an outside report that compares cities around the globe to Toronto, only pick up the angle that reports on commute times, state that we are the worst of them all and let it hang out there to collect rants of the usual colour.

Toronto ranked last in survey of commuting times
Study by Toronto Board of Trade calls finding “embarrassing”

It takes a commuter an average of 80 minutes to get to work in Toronto, according to a global study.
STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR
John Spears Business Reporter

Even gridlocked Los Angeles is a better place for commuters than Toronto and its neighbouring municipalities, says a study conducted for the Toronto Board of Trade.

It takes people in Greater Toronto an average of 80 minutes to commute to work, round trip, the study found.
....

http://www.thestar.com/yourcitymycity/article/787049--toro...

What they failed to do was to shine a bit of light WHY Toronto rated so low in this category.

This survey quite supports the efforts of Toronto to get out of the car dominance. For instance, when explaining Paris the results for Paris, the survey states:

Lessons for Toronto:
Toronto’s transportation
infrastructure is continually cited
as a major impediment to the
region’s global competitiveness.
Congestion, along with the expansion of our
transportation system, have been identified as
top issues by Board members for the past
number of years. Paris’ example shows that,
given extensive, convenient and affordable
options, people will choose to commute in ways
other than by car, thereby reducing the
congestion that clogs our roads and negatively
impacts our productivity. This underscores the
importance of the successful implementation of
Metrolinx’s regional transportation plan and of
finding a way to fund it. Paris also shows that
planning and transit expansion go hand-inhand.
It is important that transit stations are
properly developed to ensure a population
and/or job-intensive use of this valuable
space. As Metrolinx’s regional transportation
plan involves the creation of transit hubs in
multiple municipalities, it would be beneficial
to empower Metrolinx as the single developer
of these lands, rather than leaving it to each
municipality. Finally, Paris shows that
government regulations to make commuting
by car more difficult can be effective in
reducing such traffic, but they need to be
introduced either at the same time as, or
following the expansion of, other options.
Otherwise, such regulations can create more
congestion and productivity loss.

from http://bot.com/Content/NavigationMenu/Policy/Scorecard/Sco...

Decent newspaper reporting would have pointed out that car-based commute structure has led us into a dead-end, and that the city's effort to ease the congestion (e.g. via the bike plan) are not getting the political support it deserves.

So if anyone quotes this study as an argument against building a better bike structure in TO, we know better...