This Ontario man’s antique bicycle collection is going to make you rethink your next bike ride | CBC News

Since starting his collection 50 years ago, Rick Wolfe now has more than 200 bicycles and motorcycles dating back to the 1800s.

The Komoka, Ont. resident’s collection has grown so much, he custom-built his house for storage. Now, the public is invited to take a peek. 

Highlights of his collection are now on display as part of the Cycling: An Unspoken History exhibit at the Elgin County Heritage Centre in St. Thomas until August.

From floor to ceiling, the exhibit is filled with rare and antique models that shows the evolution of the bicycle from the 1860s to the 1930s — along with historical artifacts from photographs to medals, tools and costumes. 

An unspoken history of cycling is on display

A collection of cycles from the 1860s to the 1920s are part of the exhibit Cycling: An Unspoken History at the Elgin County Heritage Centre.

“It’s almost like a high-class bicycle showroom,” said Mike Baker, museum curator at the Elgin County Heritage Centre. He describes how some are hanging off the wall so that the viewer is surrounded by bicycles. 

Passion for cycling inspired by grandfather

Wolfe’s love for the two-wheeled cycle started with his grandfather, an avid cyclist, who used to ride his bike from London to Sudbury to work in the mines, opting to continue peddling even after buying a brand new car. 

Inspired by his grandfather, the now 66-year-old began collecting bicycles at 14. His passion led him to bike from north of Toronto to Philadelphia, upwards of 1,100 km on a high wheel cycle called the penny-farthing.

His collection spans the decades, starting with early inventions of velocipedes, which later evolved to high wheels and safety bicycles. 

“The bicycle industry was very innovative,” he said. “They had to find ways to sell their product, so these inventors were finding ingenious ways to attract the public to buying their particular piece.” 

There were more than 600 manufacturers of bicycles in the 1890s, according to Wolfe. “For anybody to survive in this huge industry, you had to have something that was pretty special.”

Velocipede were nicknamed ‘boneshakers’

The oldest bike on display is a 1869 French velocipede Wolfe acquired at an auction about 5 years ago. Back then, locals learned to ride at cycle schools, including ones in St. Thomas and London, at the Fork of the Thames, he said. 

It wasn’t always a smooth ride on cobbled streets, which is how bikes got the nickname boneshaker, he said. “They would rattle you, and if it was a wet and slippery road, the bike would slide out from underneath you and down you would go. The weight of the bike is over 100 pounds, so I imagine it hurt.”

Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, cycling was typically for leisure in North America, unlike Europe where it was a fact of transportation, he said. 

“People would be taken by surprise by the appearance of a bicycle, and if you weren’t ringing something loud like a bell or an alarm, they might not get out of the way in time,” said Baker. 

Bike bells were called alarms, and instead of bike lights, lanterns lit the path. “Most of the early bike lights [were] little kerosene lanterns. It’s very typical for bicycles at that time,” he said. 

Cycling history lesson

Baker said through the exhibit he’s learned just how extensive high wheel riding became in the area. “It was really big,” he said. “It was a a real craze.”

In Elgin County, there are a few “claims to fame” when it comes to local cycling history, said Baker. 

The first bicycle association in Canada, called the Canadian Wheelmen’s Association, was founded in St. Thomas in 1881, he said.

“We have a couple of local figures that were fairly prominent in early cycling history,” he said, noting Perry Ernest Doolittle, a doctor who co-founded the association. 

The exhibit runs until August 2023

The Elgin County Heritage Centre is hosting a kid-friendly cycle event with high wheel riding demos, an exhibit tour with Wolfe on May 27 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the centre located at 460 Sunset Dr. in St. Thomas.