Though university president David Naylor considers himself a cyclist, the rigors of the job and need to wear suits now prohibit him from bicycling to work.
In an interview with The Varsity on June 1, he recalled his student days, when that was not so. “When I was a grad student at Oxford, I never had a car. I had a bike. I went everywhere on a bike,” he said. “I wasn’t in a tie all the time, but I was in a jacket often.”
Now, “I wish I could bike to work,” he added. “I basically just do some recreational biking.”
The last time Naylor was able to regularly commute on a bike was in the 90s, when he headed up the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), at Sunnybrook Hospital. His commute from the Don Mills area used to cut through scenic Edward’s Gardens. These days came to an end in 1999, however, when he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Medicine and vice-provost. “Unfortunately, my attire had to improve,” he deadpanned.
And his promotion to university president last fall hasn’t helped. Though, according to Google Earth, only 3.8 kilometres separate U of T’s presidential house, in Rosedale, and Simcoe Hall at 27 King’s College Circle, where the university’s administration is housed, Naylor explained that morning meetings make for little time to clean up after biking, and that sweat and warm weather are the main bummers.
“It’s pretty hard to put on pinstripes and hop on a bike and not look like you’ve been out in the rain or been dragged in by a dog.”
That said, the university is considering ways to make campus friendlier for bikes and pedestrians, and making it less so for cars.
“The bike lane issue has actually bubbled a bit and has been on the radar screen in campus planning,” Naylor said. But, he added, “it’s still being chewed on.”
Along with bike lanes, the university has considered a number of plans for reducing the number of cars on campus over the years, he said, on account of the growing the number of students on campus. One such plan would be closing Queen’s College Circle off to cars. But a catch-22 exists, Naylor explained, in making decisions such as that.
“Unless you have more people using public transit, or using bikes or walking, the question becomes ‘well, where do you park the cars?'” he said. “I have yet to see an instant and easy solution to that one.
“While we could try to promote a less auto-dependent culture at U of T, ultimately a lot of this is going to be a wide societal thing, where we drive less.”
