Tiny ‘ghost bike’ a call to action for safer cycling
TORONTO — Geoffrey Bercarich has been making “ghost bikes” for f allen cyclists for more than a decade, but he’s never made one this small.
At his Toronto home, he stands beside a child’s bike — gleaming white from a fresh paint job — that is dedicated to Xavier Morgan, a five-year-old who crashed his bike on a city trail and fell onto a nearby six-lane roadway where he was killed by a car last week.
“This is definitely the youngest child I’ve ever had to put a memorial up for,” Bercarich says, his voice trailing off. “I don’t want this to ever happen again. And this memorial is definitely not good enough, but it’s my way to show that every life is sacred.”
Ghost bikes — reminders of the risks cyclists face — have cropped up around the country and across the world. In Toronto, Bercarich, along with the group Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists, has been building and maintaining them for years.
On Saturday morning, Bercarich will be among a large group of cyclists expected to ride en masse, slowly, but surely, to the spot where Xavier died on Toronto’s Lake Shore Boulevard.
Bercarich will bring his latest ghost bike with him, lock it to a nearby post and give the keys to Xavier’s aunt and uncle who are expected to be there, he says. The family can take the bike down if the memorial proves too painful.
Then the group — organized by Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists — is expected to form a human-bike barrier between the roadway and the trail where Xavier was riding. It will symbolize the simple fix the city can make on that portion of the Martin Goodman Trail that is barrier-free and next to the busy road.
“We just need a barrier. A sound barrier, even a tree barrier or little potted plants, just something that would separate the park’s recreation trail from what is essentially a highway,” Bercarich says.
Xavier is so far the only cyclist to die this year in Toronto. Last year, one person died. There were four deaths in 2015, three in 2014 and four in 2013, according to Toronto police.
Bercarich, 3 3, says he gets a call every time a cyclist is killed in the city. “I got word that it was a fiveyear-old cyclist that went down,” he says. “Then I heard the five-yearold cyclist went to the same school I went to. Then I heard it was on the same trail that I learned to ride a bike on. And it hit really close to home — my home.” So Bercarich — who fixes bikes in his spare time and gives them away for free to those in need — got to work.
After Xavier died, Toronto Mayor John Tory demanded a review of the safety of the city’s bike trails.
“It is past time for us to have a hard look at safety on these trails,” he said.
Between Jan. 1 and May 18, there have been 174 collisions between cyclists and motor vehicles, according to Toronto police data. There were 206 such incidents over the same period last year. And those numbers don’t include doorings, cyclist-versus-cyclist, or cyclist-versus-pedestrian crashes.
Bercarich says he wants Xavier’s family to know the little boy will be thought of for a very long time to come.