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Cycling has come a long way since the early 1980s, when Moses tried, unsuccessfully, to part the St. Lawrence River so cyclists could travel between Montreal and the South Shore.

The man in the Moses costume was Robert “Bicycle Bob” Silverman, a Montreal cycling pioneer who helped found Le Monde à Bicyclette. Today, Montreal cyclists have access to 700 kilometres of bike paths and 5,200 Bixi bikes, and they’ll eventually be able to bike across the St. Lawrence on the new Champlain Bridge. They owe a debt to Le Monde à Bicyclette, which put cycling on the public agenda in the 1970s and 1980s, lobbying relentlessly and staging colourful publicity stunts, including the Moses episode, a Ste-Catherine St. die-in and civil disobedience on the métro.

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Now 82, Silverman’s eyesight is failing but he still cycles near his Val-David home, about 200 meters away from a stretch of the Route Verte, Quebec’s network of bike trails. He lives in a bright, painting-filled loft dotted with reminders of his activist days: A miniature metal bike on the fridge. A framed black-and-white photo of himself carrying a Le Monde à Bicyclette flag in the 1980s. A large banner bearing an image of the other face of Le Monde à Bicyclette, the late Claire Morissette, after whom Montreal’s de Maisonneuve Blvd. bike path is named.