Where's the Party? International Car Free Day

By Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko
Web Exclusive - December 18, 2006 

We haven't watched the weather report this closely all summer. For the umpteenth time today, my daughter has been checking at the window "to see what it's doing out there." Is the rain going to hold off or are we going to celebrate a soggy Car Free Day?

Each year on September 22nd, International Car Free Day is celebrated by over 100 million people in about 1,500 cities around the world. From babies to the elderly, people get together to reclaim streets: to close them off and have parties, play road hockey games, to revel in entertainment and community-building activism. We've been involved with Car Free Days for five years now, almost as long as it's inception in France and Italy back in 1999—and we're certainly not going to let a few drops of rain stop us this year.

My husband Randy Kay started Transportation for Liveable Communities (TLC), an alternative transportation advocacy group in our city. This group has done the lion's share of the work in planning Car Free Day here. On today's agenda: a downtown "critical mass" bike ride, which returns to a closed-off street where we will lay down rolls of sod on the paved road, converting it into a green oasis. People can plop down in their lawn chairs, picnic on blankets, or simply sprawl out on it. Little folk will be free to crawl across it. A safe space for scampering kids, plus music and food—and we've got a party!

As we wait for the weather to make up its mind, I reflect on the past week and the recent car free events we've participated in leading up to today. TLC organized a guided hike to a beautiful local waterfall, a bike tour around a historical harbour on a multi-use waterfront trail (suitable for cycling, rollerblading and walking), guided by a local historian. There's been a free outdoor movie night at a park bandshell, and a women-only bike repair clinic where my oldest daughter (then nine) and I learned a few useful tips that we took home and applied to maintaining our own bikes.

I think of Car Free Days that Randy's group has helped put together in past years. We've enjoyed a poetry, music and film night at a local cafe, with an open mic that generated lots of hearty laughter. We learned more about public transportation on a guided bus tour of our small city. There's even been a Car Free Art Show featuring sculpture made from bike parts, paintings, and cartoons by local artists both young and old. "Months of planning, but it's always worth it," Randy muses.

The time arrives for us to leave for the event, and indeed, the rain comes after all. Undaunted, a group of about 50 people wearing brightly coloured slickers and helmets set out for the ride. Honking and tooting on bike horns, bells, and whistles, they make a veritable cacophony of sound laughing merrily, defying the rain. There are a few bike trailers carrying little kids and some older ones riding on their own bikes.

Eventually, we pedal into the party zone, and helped by children of all ages, we start setting up. A big bright banner proclaiming "Car Free Day," painted earlier at home by my kids, is hung over a store window (with their prior permission). Someone has donated an old car for celebrants to decorate, so paints and brushes are assembled. The sod is carefully laid out.

As we pause from our preparations to look up at the sky, we notice that it's stopped raining. The Goddess of Car Free Day is on our side! Now the sun is coming out and so are the clowns. They begin dazzling children and elderly alike with their antics—as well as making and handing out funny characters of twisted, skinny balloons.