The Canadian Wheelman, Vol 3, No 1
Articles in this issue
- An editorial announcing that the Canadian Wheelmen's Association has assumed entire control of The Canadian Wheelman, reprinting the committee report (cost about $600, publication brought under $500 by dropping the four midsummer issues) and explaining the paper will now be published monthly in London and sent free to every C.W.A. member.
- A rebuttal to the Toronto Mail's sneer that under the new scheme C.W.A. members will be compelled to support a paper they had neglected while believing they receive it free.
- A letter (signed D.H.F.P.) reporting the Brantford Recreation Park Company's quarter-mile cinder track and pressing Brantford's claim to host the 1886 C.W.A. meet against rivals Belleville and Montreal.
- Short editorial paragraphs commenting on Clarke and the Woodstock track, McCurdy's 233-mile record, the Springfield meet advertising, Fred Westbrook turning professional, and a quip about a Brooklyn park commissioner calling bicyclists asses.
- A report of the Illinois Bicycle Club tournament at Chicago (Oct. 16-17) where Woodstock's Herb. Clarke, amateur champion of Canada, beat Knapp by ten yards in the one-mile open after switching to a borrowed Columbia racer; R. A. Neilson took all the professional races.
- An account of the inquest into the suicide by arsenic of cyclist Cola Stone, attributed to his rejected courtship of Laura Browning, who had modelled as Delilah for John H. Fry's painting 'Samson.'
- A column of recent track and road records, including Weber's disputed 100-mile road race (track found short), Richard Howell's professional times, and W. A. Rowe of Lynn lowering the world's one-mile and 20-mile amateur records at Springfield.
- A report that Herb. Clarke, on Oct. 10 at the Woodstock Amateur Athletic Association grounds, lowered his own Canadian mile record to 2.58 3-5 despite a strong wind, with the officials named.
- A quoted passage from an enthusiastic English tricycler extolling the restorative joys tricycling brings to a weary woman.
- A humorous dialogue between a tricycling tourist and a Maine native explaining that the town has turned out armed to receive a sheriff coming after a liquor seller.
- A letter from the Woodstock correspondent ('Bicycle') urging clubs across the Dominion to write to the paper, recounting the season's events (the clerical wheelmen's visit, the Seaforth track opening, Clarke's failed record attempts and his Chicago win) and the club's plans for a winter of toboggan slides and association rooms.
- A condensed report of the Woodstock Amateur Athletic Association's final meet, drawing the smallest crowd ever, where high winds slowed the races though Clarke won the one-mile open and rode the five miles in 16.30 4-5; Wm. Boyd broke the 150-yard ride-and-run record.
- A poem by J. D. Dowling (reprinted from Cycling Record) describing a cyclist's Sabbath-morning ride through spring countryside, defending wheeling on the holy day.
- A column of brief cycling news items and squibs from home and abroad, covering St. Louis bidding for the 1887 L.A.W. meet, Hendee giving up bicycling, Karl Kron's forthcoming book, F. F. Ives's 25-mile record, T. K. Marriott's Land's End to John o'Groats ride, Thomas Stevens's round-the-world tour, and many other paragraphs.
- An account of Geo. W. Baker of St. Louis, the only amateur to ride from St. Louis to Boston by bicycle, covering 1,500 miles in nineteen and a half days on the road on an Overman-made Victor.
- A letter from Frank Veich of Toronto enclosing a Punch satire, 'Hoop-La!', a set of mock Sandhurst examination questions on the use of bicycles for military scouting.
- A humorous burlesque (by 'Norb' in The Wheel) prescribing an absurd two-month training regimen of currycombing, thrashing the trainer, fricassee of board nails, and finally a revolver to the brow.
- A Long Branch letter predicting that knee-breeches and stockings, popularised by bicyclists, will become general fashion for town wear.
- A description of L. D. Copeland of Arizona's steam bicycle, a Star-pattern machine with a gasoline-heated brass boiler and engine, which he rode around a Newark rink for twenty minutes.