Saskatoon Cycles November 2024 Newsletter
Saskatoon Civic Election 2024
On November 13, 2024, Saskatoon elected a new mayor and six new members of council.
Saskatoon Cycles would like to welcome all of the returning councilors and newly elected representatives to their positions, and applaud them for standing to serve the community. We consider Saskatoon a great city, but it’s not a utopia (yet), and a lot of hard work and tough conversations lie ahead. We’re going to need a strong, capable council.
We’d also like to extend our thanks to all of the outgoing officials for their years of service and commitment to the community. Mayor Charlie Clark and councilors Hill, Gough, Kirton, Loewen, and Gersher all helped to see Saskatoon through global upheaval, including a pandemic, economic disruption, geopolitical shifts, and a warming, more unpredictable climate. Despite it all, local council kept the city running well and welcoming to everyone.
Governance is challenging and often difficult work. Anyone who’s spent time in group dynamics knows how hard it can be to balance the desires and goals of many in a way that allows everyone to move forward together. On the scale of a city, these complexities grow even more tough to manage.
At the same time, politicians are often regarded with distrust and cynicism, even when they win fairly in our democratic processes. The expectation for them to be unresponsive or uncaring is common, and many people do not engage with their elected representatives out of a belief that everyone serving the public is corrupt in some way.
Our expectations are different. We believe that anyone standing for office is there because they have a genuine desire to make their community better. Even if our values and approaches are different, we think that every elected official deserves open, good faith communication and constructive engagement on the path to finding workable solutions.
Saskatoon Cycles will be fully engaging with our advocacy work in 2025. We will be pressing the city to continue making decisions that contribute to a healthy, positive, safer, and sustainable community, and we believe that with our membership behind us, anything is possible.
You can watch the new council’s Inaugural Meeting here.
Annual General Meeting
Our Annual General Meeting was held on Wednesday, November 27, 2024. It was a good chance to look back on the (still not complete) year and assess our accomplishments.
Notable highlights:
- Bike Valet – 3600+ bikes parked at 12 festival/events, 436 volunteer hours!
- BYXE Weeks – record participation and engagement for winter and spring
- Pedal Express – continuing process with new businesses and couriers
- Membership –continues to collect paid members and better engagement
- Educational activities – “Keep Rolling” events building skills and knowledge with newcomer organizations and community groups
- Advocacy –a series of big wins for safer infrastructure, including revamped College and Wiggins intersection, approval for future projects, and expansion of bikeways
- Community engagement – Tod Fox’s Ride for Your Life 2024, Pride Parade, Ride for Refuge, Slow Rolls, and much, much more.
Ursula Acton- Arika Block
- Cynthia Hernandez
We welcomed three new board members at the AGM: Ursula Acton, Arika Block, and Cynthia Hernandez. We’ll introduce them in more detail in future newsletters but we can say for now that they’re proven cycling ambassadors and volunteers for Saskatoon Cycles and we’re certain they’ll be assets as directors.
We also bid a fond farewell to departing board directors and long time advocates: Dr. James Arnold, Murray Gross, Zack MacGregor, and Amber McTaggart. Their service on the board has been valued and appreciated, and we wish them all the best in whatever endeavors they dive into next.
We’re pleased with the progress made throughout 2024, but we also know there’s a lot of work ahead of us. There’s a new council to get acquainted with, there are still societal forces pushing back against improved active transportation options, and there is the ever present reality of temporal and capacity limitations! In short, there is only so much time in a day to do the things we want to accomplish.
As always, we invite you to engage with us and help move cycling in Saskatoon forward.
Giving Tuesday 2024
Everyone knows about Black Friday and many about Cyber Monday and their emphasis on low low prices and frenzied consumerism, but are we as familiar with Giving Tuesday?
The folks at givingtuesday.ca describes the day like this:
GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world. GivingTuesday was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. The idea caught on and has grown around the world, inspiring hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.
As a non-profit advocacy organization, Saskatoon Cycles receives no sustained operational funding from government or institutions. This means our advocacy, services, and programs are in large part dependent on donations. Please consider donating to us on Giving Tuesday, this year on December 3 (though we do graciously accept donations anytime before and after!).
You can donate here: saskatooncycles.org/giving-tuesday/
“November Rain” Slow Roll – November 30
Join us for our monthly Slow Roll on Saturday, November 30, 2024!
Earlier in the year we struck upon the “song title theme” for the 2024 rides and “November Rain” got picked for this month’s Slow Roll. We didn’t expect it to be meteorologically accurate, but we wanted something November related and at the time didn’t know about the 1969 song by Rejoice! titled “November Snow“. We’ll know for next time.
Ultimately, the ride is the thing, not the name. So let’s get those winter wheels ready to go and officially welcome snow and ice into our schedule! We won’t go as fast, but we’ll still have an adventure!
As usual, we’ll gather at the River Landing Fire Vessel (next to Remai Modern) with a plan to depart at 2PM.
The forecast is for cold, so please layer up appropriately.
Cycling Data Collection
Have you installed Strava on your mobile device yet?
Help us collect the robust data needed to inform the discussion around cycling infrastructure and patterns around Saskatoon. With the right information, city planners and advocates can help steer decision making in an evidence-based way.
Some of the best data is just you sharing your biking routes and experiences through a couple of apps that aggregates this data and keeps it anonymous.
1. Install Strava on your phone and track every ride or walk you take. You only need a free account. And if you already use a tracking app, check to see if it has a Strava integration. There are more than 100 apps that Strava connects with.
Strava anonymizes the data from all users in an area and creates the Strava heatmap. Images from these heatmaps can be a powerful visual to show that there are cyclists and walkers using the streets all over Saskatoon (like this presentation on Circle Drive on Ave C). But we need as many cyclists as possible to be using this system!
2. Bookmark Bikemaps.org and report every time you have a cycling crash, a near-miss, see a cycling hazard, or have your bike stolen. This is NOT instead of calling an ambulance or the police. Absolutely do that first if it’s needed!!
Bikemaps.org is a system that aims to catch as many as possible of the almost 70% of all cycling incidents or near misses that don’t get reported officially.
New Social Media Platform: Bluesky
Social media is a powerful tool for connecting with other organizations, researchers, and citizens who are interested in any topic, like in our case, cycling and related issues. It also can be an environment of abuse, fraud, and mis/disinformation that guides users into increasingly anti-social perspectives by favouring posts that elicit fear and anger.
We’ve long had accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X and have generally found them beneficial. Unfortunately, in the case of Twitter/X, billionaire owner Elon Musk has made changes to the platform that have rendered it uncomfortable for us to support, and based on the declining level of engagement we’ve seen from our membership there, this seems to be a widespread sentiment.
We’re happy to announce that we’ll be reducing our new content on Twitter/X starting December 1, 2024, with the intent of officially closing our account in the future.
At the same time, we’ll be increasing our presence on the platform called Bluesky. It has a very similar structure to the old Twitter, but is designed to not be controlled or owned by any single entity, and includes “anti-toxicity” features and a culture of less hostility.
If you wish to stay connected to us via social media, we invite you to try out Bluesky and follow us there. Our handle: @saskatooncycles.org