In the late 1980s, a small group of young environmental activists began to identify as a subculture people concerned about bicycles, and their place on the streets…and they began to build a community.

“We realized it was making a difference. Every show women would come up to us and say this is really meaningful for us. Seeing women on bikes, and seeing us represented in this traditionally male-dominated world.”

“My dad took me to see On the Beach the summer it came out, in 1959. It was basically the end of the world, and the last days chronicled in Australia. I was on the edge of adolescence; I don't know, my dad must have thought I needed to have this in my brain. Well, it's been in my brain ever since, of course.”

"You might get laughed at the first time, but you back it up with numbers and success and experience elsewhere, you can start to make the case. But if you don't do that, you're never going to get the funding that you need, and it's never going to meet anywhere near its potential."

"One of my usual approaches was just to let everybody know that I rode my bike all the time, and if there were ever any cycling aspects of projects, I was happy to help on them. Rather than being hard-nosed about things, I was more of a soft-pedalling lifestyle bicycle advocate."

"I have activism in my heart but I never thought that it was the only way to get things done. For me B.E.S.T. was my passion and my professional work.  I was trying to shift the direction of B.E.S.T. to a little bit less radical and more mainstream."

"You tell car drivers what's there for them — the restaurants, the gas stations. There's all sorts of information you're told. As a cyclist you're told it's a bike route. Well, I know it's a bike route. Tell me something I need to know."

"Whenever these budgets are tight, this is the stuff that gets cut first. Unless there's somebody that's going to squeak. And if nobody's squeaking about it, nobody's complaining about it, then it's an easy cut."

"You can't just build a piece of infrastructure that doesn't take you where you want to go, which you'll still see happening in the suburbs. 'Great we got a grant to do this half kilometre bike lane…that doesn't connect to anything else.' You have to connect a network."

"In order to get the provincial government to listen to us, we had to have a community. And at that time, the community was there, but it wasn't drawn together. And so there was no voice."

"I think the approach is about including and befriending our neighbours who don't understand why we do what we do. It's about education on a personal and on a human connection basis. "

"Whenever you see absurdity in legislation, it needs to be changed, that's all. I think motorists and cyclists alike recognize that it is almost impossible to understand some of the provisions of the Motor Vehicle Act...the legislation is old and full of bad memories."

"To see the changes that are able to happen with a new local government, to me it was stunning to watch. From my view, from a distance, it's just been incredible to see what's possible."