GHOSTLY REMINDER
A memorial is set up on Camillien Houde Way to honour Clément Ouimet. His family hopes city councillors will push for measures to reduce risks for cyclists.
Clément Ouimet happened to have had a bicycle with a white frame.
That frame was used on Wednesday morning as a ghost bike to mark the spot where the 18-yearold competitive cyclist struck a vehicle making an illegal U-turn on the main road over Mount Royal. Ouimet died later that day. Friends and family members contributed white wheels, white handlebar tape and a white bicycle seat to the ghost bike.
Known as ghost bikes, bicycles painted white have been erected around the city to honour cyclists where they died in road collisions.
Gabrielle Anctil, a spokesperson for Ghost Bike Montreal, which sets up the memorials, said Ouimet is the youngest person the group has had to commemorate so far, but sadly the circumstances of his death are all too familiar.
“Generally, when we erect a ghost bike, the death was caused by design issues or regulation issues, but more broadly, it’s just a matter of us as a society choosing to prioritize traffic fluidity over people’s safety,” Anctil said. “Every time someone dies on the road, it’s crucially important that we do something.”
She added the safety issues on Camillien Houde Way, where Ouimet was struck, were well known nearly 30 years ago in a report made to the city at the time.
Perhaps because of the municipal election campaign underway, many city council candidates attended the ceremony. Ouimet’s family told organizers of the ceremony they wanted politicians to attend because they want measures to be taken to improve safety.
In the wake of the Oct. 4 collision, more concrete barriers were installed in the middle of the two driving lanes to prevent U-turns in the same spot, and signs were installed signalling that the manoeuvre is not permitted.
Among those in attendance was Marc-Antoine Desjardins. The candidate for Équipe Denis Coderre is an advocate for cycling safety as the organizer of the Tour du Silence ride in honour of those killed or injured on bikes. He also organized an event called Cyclovia, where Camillien Houde was closed to cars over three Sundays this year.
“It’s an electroshock that society needs, sadly,” he said. “No stone will be left unturned to make this safer now. You have my word.”
Coderre has been criticized by cycling advocates for not doing enough to make streets safer for cyclists.
While he has added more than 50 kilometres of bike paths, most of those are marked by paint as opposed to physical barriers separating bikes from cars.
Coderre said he’d like the city to double the annual budget for bike paths. He also wants to reduce speed on local streets, expand the Bixi bike-sharing program, and improve snow-clearing on bicycle paths.
Coderre’s goal is to increase the number of people who cycle as their main mode of transportation to 15 per cent, up from nearly three per cent now.
Marianne Giguère, the Projet Montréal spokesperson on cycling, also attended the ceremony, and said the collision highlights the need to close the road to motorized vehicles.
“We’re in a huge park, a jewel of the city that was never set up for through-traffic,” Giguère said. “The road is configured in a way that makes it easy to drive quickly, so that makes this accident predictable.”
Projet Montréal’s cycling platform calls for more physical separations between cars and bikes on streets. The party also hopes to add dedicated bike paths as much as possible whenever a major artery is rebuilt.