The motorcyle bug—which my mother believed first afflicted me when my father gave her a ride on his AJS when she was pregnant with me—still is in my system, 80 years later.
There’s no question that particular AJS, with which my father became a road-racing champion in Latvia just as the Second World War was starting, had much to do with it.
Indeed, my first motorcycle, which I bought in secret and kept on a friend’s farm not far from our house in Niagara Falls, Ontario, was a Matchless, essentially a rebadged version of AJS. I was 17 years old at the time, and I knew my parents would have forbade the purchase had I asked for permission.
During my twenties, I owned several road and off-road machines, starting with a Honda 160 Scrambler and a Yamaha Trail 250 DT-1 and culminating with a Honda CB450, one of the great all-around Japanese motorcycles, and a glorious red Bultaco 250 Matador from Spain that made me fantasize about the International Six Day Trial every time I danced with it down a trail in the woods.
For me, it’s always been the ride—on the open road, or the narrow trail—and my love of magazines that fuel my passion for motorcycles.
I started Cycle Canada magazine on Valentine’s Day, 1971, in what truly was an act of love—for motorcycles and for publishing. I had been newspapering for about 10 years, and had returned to motorcycling with the Hondas and Bultaco.
There was one amateurish Canadian motorcycle magazine in existence at the time. Every time I picked up a copy, I gagged—and told myself I could do better. Thus, it came to pass, after encouragement by Carl Bastedo, my motorcycle dealer and fellow enduro rider, that I left Niagara Falls for Toronto with nothing more than an idea and a miniscule budget. Seven weeks later, the first Cycle Canada was published.
Fifty years on, what I remember most about the early years of Cycle Canada are the test rides I managed to take on the outstanding motorcycles of the day, despite the 20-hour days and the seven-day work weeks that were needed to start a new magazine on a shoestring.
Who can ever forget sweeping through the Haliburton Highlands on a Norton Commando 850 Interstate, one-up, at dawn, with many more miles to ride? The Norton was black, the colour God intended motorcycles to be. Who can forget crackling through Algonquin Park on the Kawasaki 750 H2 Mach IV? Equipped with a fairing, supposedly for touring, for chrissakes, with the net result being all that triple-cylinder cacophony contained around the rider.
How about flying along Highway 401 on a bright orange Laverda? Whether it was a 750 twin or 1000 triple is hazy now, but the recollection of being able to move tractor-trailers out of the way with the air horn is vivid. What about the first ride on a Honda 350 Four, flicking through Toronto’s High Park early one morning? Smooth as silk, smooth as butter, smooth as anything you can imagine.
Never to be forgotten is the thrill and embarrassment that came with the first water-cooled Suzuki GT750. For the time, it was a stunning example of Japanese engineering prowess, so smooth and so quick. Alas, we got carried away during a photography session and slid the poor thing on its side for 50 yards before parking it, hard, against a guard rail. That was one red-faced telephone call I had to make to the Suzuki distributor, especially since it was the first and only GT750 in Canada at the time.
In the early 1970s, it was possible to trail ride in the Don Valley, from Lake Ontario to almost the 401. What a blast it was to hit the dirt minutes from the Cycle Canada office in downtown Toronto! Dancing down the trail on a nimble KTM, bashing up hills on a Honda Elsinore, crashing a Hodaka 125 into the filthy water of the Don, those were the days.
Fifty years later, what I remember most fondly about the early years of Cycle Canada are the people who helped me along the way.
As soon as I opened the office, Mike Duff stopped by and offered to write a column about his Grand Prix experiences. Photographer Gregg Stott came aboard to shoot road tests and the first cover of Dick Mann winning Daytona on a BSA. Brothers Bob and Tom Wilson insisted they could write race reports better than anyone. My sister Mara designed the first logo—a stylized image of a motorcyclist which lived on for many years despite being labelled Ghoul Rider—and my brother-in-law became the printer with liberal credit terms.
But the best thing that happened, right after the first edition came out, was a young newspaper reporter who had worked for me at The Review in Niagara Falls. Martin Levesque called from The Windsor Star, said he had heard good things about Cycle Canada, and wanted to know if I needed help. I hired him on the spot. A week later he arrived, at about 11 o’clock in the evening, and was surprised when I handed him a rewrite to be finished before he went home.
That’s the way it was in the early days: Work, work, work, sleep, work, work, work, ride, repeat cycle. Somehow find time and energy to start Moto Journal, Cycle Canada’s sister publication in French. No wonder I burned out in four years, sold the business to Marty, who had become my partner by then, and went sailing with my Folkboat on Lake Ontario for a summer before returning to newspapering.
With Marty at the helm as publisher, John Cooper as editor of Cycle Canada, and Jean-Pierre Belmonte as editor of Moto Journal, I figured my babies would grow without me—and they sure did!
Three years later, I returned as a hired hand and became editorial director, my chief task being conversion of the two consumer publications from tabloids to magazines and start up of Motorcycle Dealer & Trade for the trade.
By 1981, in a partnership that proved mighty effective, we started Great American Media in California and produced The Great American Motorcycle Shows in major markets across the United States. After we sold the business, I went sailing again. This time, with the trimaran Great American and one crew, I sailed my way into Guinness Book of Records with a 77-day passage from New York to San Francisco via Cape Horn in 1989.
Since then, I moved from sail to power for my boating, founded and operated the West Marine Trawler Fest series, again in the U.S., which I sold to launch Circumnavigator in 2002, a custom magazine about voyaging the world in Nordhavns, a specialized offshore powerboat, that I edited and published for 10 years.
In 2010, I jumped at the chance to edit and publish Glory Road, the prototype for a new Harley-Davidson magazine in the U.S. Unfortunately, the economic meltdown south of the border halted the project after one edition.
Luckily, I did get to spend a lot of time on a Harley-Davidson—specifically, 7,221 miles (11,621 km) from Key West in Florida to Anchorage in Alaska. What a scoot that was!
Decades later, love of the ride still tugs at heart.
Hello Georgs, John Cooper pass along this article along to me and I enjoyed reading it. I have also been down the Canadian publishing gauntlet with the Traction eRag. It produced a lifetime of fond memories and friends. No regrets!
Yes Georgs, The motorcycle bug is contagious. My sister caught it from you and then I got my Suzuki 650 and my M license sometime in the ´80s. Very few women riders back then. Enjoyed it immensely but decided I wanted a long life so gave up the dream. But it all started with your father! Gita.