Don Cherry kicked off the current political era in Toronto last December when he appeared at city hall to welcome new Mayor Rob Ford, at which time the coach lambasted "all the pinkos out there who ride bicycles and everything."
While Ford was one of the minority of city councillors who voted last year against the adoption of the Bixi bike-sharing program, it was officially welcomed this week by another right-leaning politician who once opposed the plan, Denzil Minnan-Wong.
Providing the option of spontaneously wheeling around the city, a system that proved popular when it launched two years ago in Montreal, became a contentious topic because Bixi asked the City of Toronto for a $4.8 million loan guarantee to install 1,000 bikes at 80 downtown stations.
Furthermore, public enthusiasm wasn't immediate, either: Bixi struggled to sell the first 1,000 annual $95 memberships stipulated as a condition of launch.
Now that the bike stations have started to appear around the city, though, the
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