"Statues & Wheels" Westmount Toastmaster's Speech October 15 2019

       I admit it, when I see a statue I like, I imitate it.  It’s human nature. 

Mr Chairman, Fellow Toastmasters and most Welcome Guests.

       I am not always able to  stand up freely and imitate statue poses.  Recently, my wife and I
 crammed ourselves into our economy class seats and took a plane from Montreal to Vienna. 

  We’d been planning for a while, spend 5 days in Vienna then another 5 in Budapest with our
 Daughter Erin who would fly from Philadelphia to join us.   A perfect family get together 
visiting museums, art galleries, eating and doing whatever else we took an interest in.

      I like to think of myself as an advocate for sustainable tourism.  Not that taking a jet plane 
to Europe should be considered sustainable.  Generally Sustainable Tourism for me means
 getting together with friends and riding bicycles looking at whatever we stumble upon along
 the way.  This vacation however we would not use bicycles but rather stick to Public Transit
 and wander about two cities. The strategy would be the same however, just enjoy ourselves 
and take note of whatever we find.

      It turns out that I made a good choice with Vienna.  That city is Public Transit Heaven! 
 I took a train from the airport to the Hotel we were staying.  It was at the edge of the central 
medieval city. The U-Bahn and the S-Bahn (the metro and surface trains) run every 3 minutes 
and the street rolleys can quickly  take you anywhere you want to go. You don’t even have to
 pass through a turnstile to get onto the system. Restricting myself to Public Transit or Bicycles
 on vacation allows me to call it sustainable tourism.

      The first place we stumbled upon was a gem.  The Hundertwasser Museum celebrates
 Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an architect who believed that to be pleasing and close to
 nature, buildings to be  should have no straight lines.

    This philosophy sounded like it might be close to my own heart  and I was curious to see
 what his buildings would look like. 

  It was the perfect fit for the start of my sustainable tourism trip.   I found out that Vienna even
 has a municipal garbage incinerator that doubles as a tourist attraction.

   Another stop in Vienna was to Prater Park, which I knew beforehand had a connection to
 the historical Montreal Bicycle Club.  This amusement park is home to a giant Ferris wheel,
 built during the bicycle craze of the 1890’s. Today it is best known for being the setting for
 the “cuckoo clock scene” in Orson Welles  "The Third Man".  

 

The Well’s “cuckoo clock” line is one of the classics of cinema history.  Since I have this need 
to imitate great art I had to get my mugshot with the Prator Wheel.

      I have a theory about the connection between Ferris Wheels and 19th century cycling. The
 first Ferris Wheel was built for the Chicago World Fair in 1893.  The Fair organizers wanted
 to have something so novel that could compete for attention with the Eiffel tower which had
 been a stunning success at earlier Paris World Fair. 

     At the Chicago Fair the modern style bicycle was only recently invented and the world was
 in what later became known as the bicycle craze of the 1890’s. This was the early period of
 the Worldwide Bicycle Craze of the 1890’s.  Cycling promoters held the first world cycling 
championship in Chicago at the same time of the Chicago Fair and the iconic Ferris Wheel. 
This connection between Ferris Wheels and cycling continued in the 1890’s. The Vienna 
Wheel was built in the later part of the craze and Prator Park held the 1898 cycling world 
Championship.  Canada, for the first time sent a team to compete in the world championship
 and as a reward for the Vienna participation Montreal was awarded the 1899 world 
championship which was held at Queens Park in Verdun.  

 The Montreal world championship was a watershed event.  It was last world cycling 
championship run by the British International Cycling Association.  Afterwards that 
organization fell apart over various disputes and was taken over by the French Union Cycliste
 International.  Since that time cycling has been thought of as an European rather than an 
American sport.

   Thinking about these connections and their implications, my Wife and I took the train to
 Budapest, a city renowned for its beautiful buildings and statues.

    The Millennium Monument was built about the same time as the Prater Wheel to 
commemorate the 1000-year-old history of the Magyars.

    When the monument was originally constructed, Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian
 Empire and thus the last five spaces for statues on the left of the colonnade were reserved
 for members of the ruling Habsburg dynasty. The Habsburg emperors were replaced with 
Hungarian heros more in keeping with the then political climate when the monument was 
rebuilt after being damaged in World War II.

  Also after World War II, in 1951, just beside the Millennium Monument, the communists built
 a statue to Stalin.

   Statues invoke strong feelings within people.  During the 1956 short lived anti communist 
Hungarian Revolution, the statue was attacked and torn down, until only the boots remained.  

    When the Russian Communists returned to Budapest they replaced what remained of the 
Stalin Monument with one of Lennin.  Budapest was filled with monuments to communism 
until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since then they have all been removed and taken far out of the 
center of the city to specially built Memento Park.  The statue I imitated at the start of the talk is
 in this park. 

     Budapest and Vienna showed to me how people can identify with, or rebel against the
 ideals represented by buildings, statues, even Ferris wheels.  The Habsburgs, the 
communists and cycle craze racing promoters each built or used iconic symbols to represent 
themselves.

   What are the movements today that will need such symbols?   The environmental movement
 that attempts to alter the behaviour and values of people in response to climate change, 
diminishing natural resources and Species extinction.  It is a movement that will be with us for 
 the rest of our lives and long thereafter.

The environmental movement already makes use of  images such as polar bears on melting
 ice to draw attention to climate change.  But what of statues and monuments?

 I believe that sustainable tourism will grow in importance and cycling will play a large that 
movement. The starting points of main cycle routes will be marked and monuments that define
 each route will be built.  

I enjoy thinking of where the starting points of these future cycle paths will be,  and what 
these monuments at the starting points might look like. Hungary is not alone in the removal
 of statues that no longer suit the political mood.  Here in Canada, the Orillia Champlain
 Monument was removed this year and may not be returned.

This statue was on the Simcoe County BIcycle Path Loop which a group of us rode last 
Labour Day weekend.  Locking a Monument to signify the start of our two day trip we quickly
 improvised an imitation in the same location as the original.

    When members of the Montreal Bicycle Club get together we sometimes talk about potential
 new routes and how they should be designed and marked.  Someday these new routes will  
have statues dedicated to showing Man’s relationship to nature at prominent locations.