Canadian Cycling Magazine

Each year, the Tour de France, with its 21 days of racing, generates so many stories. I can imagine a cycling-focused Scheherazade-like journalist telling more than 1,001 tales for just one edition of the Grand Tour. By my calculations, if you wrote about every rider on the start list for each day of racing, that’s 3,696 stories. (That is also assuming no one leaves the race, which would only happen in a work of fiction.) You could also cover sport directors, soigneurs, mechanics and spend an eternity on one edition. Canadian Cycling Magazine is a smaller operation than the Tour, but some of this issue’s pages encompass that big event as writer Rob Sturney—who will also cover the event on our site during July—captured some of the main narratives we’re…

Editor Matthew Pioro matthew@cyclingmagazine.ca Senior Editors Dan Dakin, Kevin Mackinnon, Dean Campbell Associate Editor Andre Cheuk Photo Editor Matt Stetson matt.stetson@gripped.com Copy Editors Amy Stupavsky, Rebecca Tucker Art Director Warren Wheeler layout@cyclingmagazine.ca [Roseander Main, roseandermain.com] Production Artist Warren Hardy MTB Web Editor Terry McKall terry@cyclingmagazine.ca Web Editor Matt Hansen matt.hansen@cyclingmagazine.ca Editorial Intern Hannah Marais Podcast Producer Adam Killick Web Developer Sean Rasmussen Digital Operations Dmitry Beniaminov Publisher Sam Cohen sam@gripped.com Editorial Director David Smart dave@gripped.com Advertising & Sales Andre Cheuk andre@gripped.com Account Managers Joel Vosburg joel@gripped.com, Lorena Jones lorena@gripped.com Circulation Manager Robyn Milburn robyn@gripped.com Social Media Nikita van Dijk nikita@gripped.com SUBSCRIBE Send $20.95 (1 year) or $38.95 (2 years) to Canadian Cycling Magazine PO Box 819 Station Main Markham, ON, Canada L3P 8L3 or call: 1.800.567.0444 SUBMIT Manuscripts, photographs and other correspondence are welcome. Please contact Canadian Cycling Magazinefor contributors guidelines, or see them on the web at cyclingmagazine.ca. Unsolicited material should be accompanied by return mailing address and postage. Canadian Cycling Magazine Tel 416.927.0774 Fax 416.927.1491 yclingmagazine.ca Gripped Publishing Inc. 75 Harbord St., Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1G4 Copyright 2023 Gripped Publishing…

Alison Jackson and her historic, big rock from Roubaix The winner’s trophy for Paris-Roubaix is a bit absurd. It’s fitting, sure, but also kind of silly. Who really needs a big, heavy rock on their mantel? The pavé, however, also carries the weight of the race’s history: a brutal endurance test for men that began in 1896. The women’s edition only started in 2021. This year, Alison Jackson—from Vermilion, Alta, a farming town about 200 km east of Edmonton—made history in northern France. She won Paris-Roubaix, becoming the first North American to do so. After the podium ceremony, Jackson lugged her rock around, slightly unsure about its actual weight. 12 lb.? 12 kg? What a Canadian conundrum. The country went metric during the ‘70s, but so many Canucks gauge weight in imperial.…

Parmi Women’s All-Trail T-shirt $150, parmilifewear.com Parmi is a new clothing brand based in Mont-Tremblant, Que. Its women’s All-Trail T-shirt, made of a light, breathable fabric, is equally at home during daytime rides in the woods as it is in town after the sun is down. The company also produces a matching pair of bib shorts with cargo pockets. Kids Ride Shotgun Dirt Hero off-road balance bike $435 (12" wheels), $460 (14" wheels), kidsrideshotgun.ca Kids Ride Shotgun is growing. For years, the company’s bike seat has perched kids on their parents’ mountain bikes for inspiring rides. Shotgun’s new balance bike now lets the little ones, aged 2 to 5, gain more independence and skills on the trails. The bike, with its aluminum frame, is a pretty serious mini-enduro machine. For an additional $129, you can add a…

In 1983, John Harrington was a bike racer, bicycle P&A sales rep and frame builder. I met John when I was working at West Valley Bikes in San Jose, Calif. After seeing a few of his custom bikes, I asked him to build me a mountain bike frame. At that time, most mountain bikes used the same tube diameters as road bikes, so the use of oversize tubes on this frame was quite novel. In an effort to add compliance to the frame, I specified a 1 ¼" Columbus top tube that was ovalized by Phil Wood for use in his custom-built wheelchair frames. The hubs on the bike are also Phil Wood’s design, built on a set of 32-mm Specialized Saturn rims. Yes, that’s correct: mountain bikes in the early ’80s…

Earlier this year, I signed up for a two-week intensive bike mechanic course. Cycling is a late-in-life passion, something I fell into haphazardly and which in many ways took over my life. An initial, reluctant foray of a week’s cycling tour led to a series of long-distance, continental treks: Africa from Cairo to Cape Town, across America, and most recently six months down the length of North America. While I have driven cars all my life, I’ve never felt a compulsion to master the mechanisms of the internal combustion engine. It was different with the bike. Long hours in the saddle, day after day, promoted a sense of intimacy. How could I be so connected to this simple, elegant machine and know nothing of its workings? “I had embarked on something that…