Stephanie Blackmore

In the early hours of August 9, 2016, Stephanie Blackmore was cycling from her home in the Junction to Prairie Boy Bread, the bakery where she worked in Dufferin Grove. She was taking the bike lane along Annette Street where Dundas meets Dupont when an oncoming driver turned left, T-boning her. Without signalling or yielding, she says, he “made the turn as if no one was there.”

Before the accident, Blackmore would work 10 hours a day on her feet, making bread from scratch and loving it. But now the 31-year-old has trouble making dinner in the evenings for herself and her husband. She had to relearn how to walk and is in constant pain with nerve route injuries and bursitis in her hip. Her arm goes numb after prolonged use. She says she doesn’t have a career anymore and is debating a return to school, “but my brain just doesn’t work the same as it used to and my tolerance for everyday stuff is low.”

Now she spends much of her free time writing letters to city councillors, the mayor and the premier, advocating for bike lanes, and attending vigils, when she’s not making appointments for physiotherapy, resting and sometimes doing aquafit at the pool. “For the most part I live a totally different life than I used to.”