Drivers not wanted
Creative dissent goes car-free
Aaron Levere Staff
On September 22, people spent the first day of fall basking in the sunny streets as though they didn’t have a car in the world. An imagined world without cars was realized, if in only a small piece of the world and only temporarily. Car Free Day is an annual invitation to imagine all of the possibilities for our city streets and to make these fantasies a reality. Not only that, it is also an invitation to do so with 99 of your closest friends.
Winnipeg is one of an estimated 1500 cities worldwide that participates in Car Free Day festivities annually. This year, Albert Street was blocked off for the afternoon to challenge the idea that streets were ever intended to be the exclusive domain of the automobile. The idea that streets are for cars has become so prevalent that it is easy to forget that streets were once full of people.
When something as ubiquitous as car culture goes unquestioned on a day-to-day basis by so many people, it easily becomes a novel idea to use the street in other ways. We all complacently yield the empty space that fills our cities to a select group of users — the drivers. For many urbanites, this is the one time of year when they dare to play in their own “front yard.”
So what did people do with their reclaimed patch of pavement?
Some danced. Some brought cake. Some ate cake. Some wrote. Some typed. Some drew with chalk. Some lounged on couches. Greg MacPherson sang. More dancing. Someone brought out hockey sticks and it was all “Game on!” and never “Car!” with a play-by-play that was part Bob Cole and part Allen Ginsberg, while the talking, lounging, comings and goings carried on. They came for dissent and stayed for dessert.
It makes sense that these spaces are the domain of those who live around them and not those who are just rapidly passing through. But another aspect of Car Free Day considers who these transients are. To question the assumptions about who counts as traffic, Car Free Day also featured a critical mass ride. Dozens of cyclists laid down their cake and hockey sticks to ride the streets of Winnipeg in one festive flock, attempting to remind motorists that bikes are also vehicles.
Was Car Free Day a success? On a day when gas prices hit new highs in some parts of Canada (over $2 per litre in several Ontario cities), this was likely a more influential factor in the choice of transportation, despite the car-free fun to be had on Albert Street.
There were still a few cars on Portage (one or two maybe). The odd car here and there on Pembina continued to make the road long, stinky and sketchy. The drivers who persisted even on Car Free Day were still not overly excited to see their two-wheeled cohabitants taking a lane. So the day may not have been exactly “car-free.”
But then, there is a lot to be said for the joys of creative dissent in itself. Part of what makes the exercise of claiming car-free streets for a day worthwhile is demonstrating the change in lifestyle that accompanies such an alternative. The cars may have the streets, but everyone else has their priorities straight.
