Father, son revisiting history with cycling trip
Battlefield Bike Ride to take 150-plus Canadians through First World War sites around Europe
It’s not the physical strain of cycling 600 kilometres from England to France that has Larry and Steve Osachoff worried. That’s the easy part. It’s the emotional weight of visiting the places where thousands of Canadians gave their lives during the First World War that has the Vancouver father-son duo nervous to begin their journey.
“I have thought a lot about it, and honestly? I think it will be utterly heart-wrenching,” said Larry.
“It’s going to be a very, very difficult trip because when you think of the thousands of names on the monuments and their bodies aren’t even discovered — how can that not just turn your stomach?”
Larry and son Steve are among more than 150 Canadians participating in the Battlefield Bike Ride with Wounded Warriors Canada this month. The charity works to raise awareness of the mental health struggles and post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans and first responders, as well as funds support services.
The ride will begin June 9 in London and make its way through historical sites of the First World War, including the Tyne Cot Cemetery and Passchendaele Canadian Memorial — both in Belgium — before wrapping up June 17 in Vimy Ridge in France. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle for Vimy Ridge.
Larry, now 71, is an avid cyclist who first started biking in 2001 with the encouragement of his cardiologist after receiving a heart stent. His first trip took him from Vancouver to Castlegar.
“Everything went wrong with that,” Larry explained. “I had a really bad bike but I finished and I thought, ‘Gee, that’s 10 per cent of Canada.’ And it had me fired up for the next year with the proper bike and clothing and so on to do Canada, which was 7,100 kilometres.”
The trip across Canada then led to solo cycling trips through Ireland, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Mongolia and China. This year will be his first Battlefield Bike Ride.
“You’re seeing, smelling, touching, experiencing all of that at 18 kilometres an hour,” said Larry. “It is all around you. You are in it.”
It’s a unique way to explore an aspect of family history that is often challenging to talk about openly, said Steve.
“I don’t know what to expect and I’m excited at that idea that we’re just going headfirst into it,” said Steve, 37.
Steve’s great-grandfather, Thomas Mitten, fought in the First World War; his maternal grandparents, Henry Conroy and Mickey Mitten, met during the Second World War. Mickey worked at an airplane factory, while Conroy was stationed in Brighton. Mickey’s brother also served in Egypt.
“It’s an ever-present event, that something very significant happened to our family during the war, that our family was touched by it,” said Steve.
“But like a lot of families, a lot of these stories don’t come out probably because they’re not pleasant to talk about. So I can’t say that I know intimately what our military history was or anything like that, but I definitely know that there was sacrifice in the family.”