This story was first published in the Toronto Star on May 28, 1979.

It’s going to be a trying week for Metro drivers.

This is Bike-to-Work Week. All week long. It will feel much longer.

First of all, Bike-to-Work Week, sponsored by the City of Toronto’s cycling committee, is a blatant attempt to encourage people who don’t normally ride their bikes to work to do so. Considering there are already an estimated 10,000 bicycle commuters on downtown Toronto streets each day, this is bad news.

Joan Doiron, a member of the cycling committee and a militant cyclist herself, frankly admitted yesterday that organizers hope the streets “are clogged with cyclists” this week.

This is, as any car driver knows, a frightening thought.

Furthermore, cyclists are being urged to travel in packs this week, called “caravans” or “convoys” by officials. Thus, a driver who, say, accidentally leans on his horn risks incurring the wrath of an entire pack of cyclists.

Finally, Bike-to-Work Week — culminating next Saturday with International Cyclists’ Day and a rally — gives cyclists the opportunity to spread their propaganda.

All week, Torontonians will be bombarded with falsehoods about car drivers, while cyclists are painted as fine and decent human beings — selfless types who only want to make the world a better place to live in.

The truth is cyclists no longer know their place, which is not on city streets. When a cyclist says, as 22-year-old Michael Schabas said yesterday, that “car drivers should treat bicycles with the respect they give a Lincoln Continental,” it is time for drivers to fight back.

Most cyclists are either academics — students or teachers — or unemployed.

Certainly, there are not many cyclists in the other professions, and few in business.

From the archives: Clippings of Blatchford's work at the Star View document on Scribd

This is not because cyclists are uneducated or lazy; rather, it is because many firms have dress standards that cyclists simply can’t meet. It is onlyin a few select circles that a man who tucks his pants into his socks is considered a smart dresser, and it is rarer still to find a fellow who can wear elastic bands with elan.

Cyclists, like joggers, talk constantly of the joys of their habit. Often, they are smug and unbearable, especially as they whip by your car in the morning rush hour.

However, by nightfall, especially on rainy evenings, cyclists have often acquired a mysterious tolerance for drivers, and can be found shamelessly begging for a life home.

Another thing about cyclists is that they are not especially clean. They believe that there is nothing quite like working up a good sweat. They are quite right, too, for there is nothing quite like it.

Cyclists are not usually blessed with a wicked sense of humour. For instance, they fail to understand why the sight of a large adult human being wearing a helmet and riding a fragile bicycle equipped with tiny rear-view mirrors sends some people into gales of laughter.

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People who ride bikes often make poor parents. Many cyclists, for instance, force their children — perfectly content to eat potato chips in front of the tube — to ride bicycles with them. Younger children are sometimes forced to ride on the handlebar of their parents’ cycles, which is quite heartless.

These are some of the things drivers should keep in mind this week as herds of cyclists take to the streets. Now that there is a special week named in their honour, cyclists are liable to assume that the roads are theirs, and may dream of the Don Valley Parkway being made into a bicycle path one day.

Finally, for International Cyclists’ Day next weekend, drivers might consider launching a protest at Queen’s Park and demanding equal rights with cyclists — such things as car pathways through Toronto parks.

Militant cyclists must not be allowed to run rampant on our streets.