The Forest City Bicycle Club at "The Guns", Victoria Park, ca. 1890.
The automobile mania of the second and third decades of the twentieth century was matched by the bicycle craze of the 1880s and the 1890s. The first velocipede was seen on the city's streets in 1869 and during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century several bicycle clubs were formed. The Forest City Bicycle Club, organized in 1881, was the most prestigious and enduring. The usual meeting place for local excursions and competitions was in front of the cannons, of Crimean War vintage, in Victoria Park. In this anonymous photograph observe the Club's special riding uniform and the variety of cycles owned by its male and female members.
Courtesy: Regional Collection, The D.B. Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario
