Based primarily on newspaper research using the online research tool BAnQ numérique, as well as a close analysis of the promotional brochure produced by the Quebec Bicycle Club, this presentation will focus on the annual meet of the Canadian Wheelmen’s Association held in Quebec City in 1896.

In addition to describing the preparations made by the club prior to the meet, and the events associated with it, it will outline the campaign that won the meet for the historic city. The major theme of that campaign was the need to expand the CWA network beyond Ontario and Montreal, thereby strengthening national unity. The appeal, however, was largely to Quebec City’s historical status as the site of Wolfe’s victory in 1759 rather than to the need to heal wounds that had been caused by the role of the Manitoba Schools Question in the recent federal election.

THE GUEST

Jack Little is Professor Emeritus in the history department of Simon Fraser University. The majority of his publications focus on nineteenth-century Quebec. His publications related to the Quebec City area include: Patrician Liberal: The Public and Private Life of Sir Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, 1829-1908 (University of Toronto Press); “‘Impractical, Frivolous and Visionary’: Quebec City’s Push for an Annual Ice Bridge, 1811–1853,” Urban History Review 52, no. 2 (2024): 385–395; and with James Dean Hunter, The Story of Cumberland Fief and its Manors in the Chaudière Valley, Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network, Heritage News (forthcoming).