Cycling Through History

By Jazmine Aldrich

Cycling is a popular sport and pastime for Townshippers and tourists alike, especially during the warm summer months – but when were bicycles introduced to the Townships, and what was their impact?

As with most trends in the Eastern Townships, the machine cycled its way here from metropolitan Montreal and from the United States. The term “velocipede,” or “vélocipède” was coined by German inventor Karl Freiherr von Drais, known as “the father of the bicycle,” with the invention of his Laufmaschine (dandy horse) in 1817. The late-1860s and 1870s in Montreal saw a booming interest in the penny-farthing (high wheel) bicycle, which was named for the British penny and farthing coins resembling the respectively large and small wheels of the bicycle.

One of the earliest mentions of a bicycle in a Townships newspaper dates from 1881. On October 21 of that year, the Weekly Examiner of Sherbrooke published a poem entitled “To One of the Bicyclists.” If the title alone does not imply that bicyclists were not-so-numerous in 1881 Sherbrooke, the personal tone of the poem certainly does; the author of said poem expresses a strong distaste towards the subject’s “spindly” legs, which were on display in his cycling attire. Other choice descriptors for the bicyclist’s legs included “scraggy” and “pipe-stems” – one can only hope that the target of this pointed critique did not recognize himself in this description.

Despite the growing presence of bicycles in populous Sherbrooke, the Weekly Examiner reported on September 28, 1883 that the people of Cherry River – which the paper affectionately described as a “quiet little back country village” – “had their curiosity considerably excited […] by the appearance on the street of a regular thorough bred Bicycle.” This mechanical marvel was ridden by an American nephew of Adam Sager, Esq. of Cherry River. The nephew, Amherst Sager, hailed from Lawrence, Massachusetts. The newspaper wittily reported that while “Mr. Sager says that upon a good road he can outdo the best of horses”, it had rained the day prior and there was “no news worth mentioning.” Many cyclists today would still commiserate with Mr. Sager’s experience of road conditions in the Townships – paved or unpaved!

By 1896, it seems that while bicycles were still an exciting invention in the Eastern Townships, they were folding into the regular routine of life. The Sherbrooke Examiner published several advertisements relating to bicycles in its June 12, 1896 issue. McKechnie’s dry goods store on Wellington Street in Sherbrooke advertised “Ladies’ Bicycle Jerseys” at $2.25 each. Meanwhile, Abbott and McKindsey in Lennoxville advertised “The Cleveland Swell Special” which they labeled as “The Combination of Art, Science and Brains”; the advertisement went on to call it “a perfect bicycle of which its manufactures, its riders, and as a specimen of home manufacture, every patriotic Canadian is justly proud […].”

An advertisement of particular note in the same newspaper issue was for George Foss’ newly-opened Bicycle Repair Shop, located at 12 Water Street (today, rue des Abénaquis) in Sherbrooke. George Foote Foss invented the Fossmobile, Canada’s first successful gasoline-powered automobile, that very same year at the age of twenty. A short distance away on Wellington Street, another member of the Foss family, A.H. Foss, was renting out bicycles by the hour, day, or week.

We hope that this brief ride through Townships history will inspire you to enjoy the beauty of a Townships summer on two wheels! If you would like to learn more about the history of the Townships, please contact the ETRC Archives by email at etrc2@ubishops.ca or by telephone at 819-822-9600, extension 2261.