Maria Worton lives and writes in a Montreal apartment with four lanes of traffic out the front and a raccoon called Rocky out the back.

I caught up with Robert Silverman, one of Montreal's most famous anarchists, as he prepares to leave his hometown of 69 years and move to Spain. Robert is famous for co-founding Monde à Bicyclette, guerrila theatre, walking the talk and riding a bike where a bike needs to go. Since the Island of Montreal now sports 350 kilometers of bike path he's not nicknamed Bicycle Bob for nothing. You might say he is an activist with many hats who wears only the one helmet. He spoke with me about some of the hats he wears on a frontline stretching from here to Palestine.

Do you enjoy being called Bicycle Bob?

Yes. At first I was embarrassed by it and sometimes it bothers me because I'm not a bicycle and I feel like a Robert. But I like it too because the bicycle is a symbol of near perfection in terms of its personal, social and planetary implications. Spatially the car and the city are incompatible since the car takes up so much room, 10 times as much room as the person it moves. It's obvious and grotesque. In Europe destroying housing for parking is absolutely illegal. Here there's more money to be made from parking lots than residential housing. Schneider, who wrote " Autokind Versus Mankind", says that the biggest pollution made by the car is mental pollution.

 What event moved you to become an activist?

When did I find solidarity for the first time in my life? Christmas day 1959, it was very cold, a little snow. Dimitri Roussopoulos invited me and others to a demonstration against the presence of Bomarc nuclear warheads in La Macaza, Quebec and North Bay, Ontario. Well, I had just quit my father's business, in insurance, I was 26, middle-class, single, no experience. How could I refuse? The cause was saving the world. I was walking with people who wanted to save the world. And I felt joy for the first time, de-alienation. It saved my life because I saw a way other than fighting everyone in the dog-eat-dog-save-yourself mentality of my family. I found myself in solidarity.

How would you describe the role you've played in PAJU (Palestinians and Jews United)?

I haven't played a very big role in PAJU actually. I'm an executive member. But really I serve as a sort of example that there are Jewish people who understand and are against the occupation engendered by people like Sharon who claim they speak in the name of the Jewish people. For Palestinians and most non-Jewish people it's automatic, the occupation is illegal. The UN says it's illegal to occupy, isolate and destroy another people as Israel is doing with the occupation and its starvation and ethnic cleansing tactics.

 What do you do exactly?

I participate in most of the Friday vigils outside the Israeli consulate. I do a lot of posting, sending of appropriate text to the PAJU mailing list. Though it's a natural thing to do, it did take some courage at first because I got death threats and my sister didn't talk to me for the first year and a half. And some prominent people I thought would be above this sort of thing still won't talk to me or respond to my letters. They accuse me of treason, without saying it outright. …Actually, I went with PAJU to Palestine you know, a year ago today.

Where did you travel to?

We went to East Jerusalem, Ramallah, Jericho, Hebron, Gaza, Jenin.

 Who did you speak with?

Many, many people including Chairman Yasser Arafat and his brother, in the Gaza Strip. We spoke to Israeli groups which were for civil rights…lawyers…war resisters conscientious objectors…The Association of Palestine women, and Palestinian ecologists who don't want the waste matter from the settlers to go pollute their water as it does now.

 How did you find Arafat during your visit?

Well he was with continuous visitors, he looked old and tired. He was at the end of the table and he was saying to our delegation, "Look there's two things I want you to do: I want you to tell the Canadian people how we're occupied and how we can't move. It's urgent, urgent for you to speak to the Canadian government and get an international peace keeping force to protect us from the Israeli occupiers." He was talking about the kind of intervention Canadians and others are prepared to do in Afghanistan now and historically in Bosnia and many other places where there have been international peace keepers to protect the native people from foreign aggressors.

Would you agree Bob with Edward Said that a humanist education and perspective is the key to improving the lot of humankind?

A humanist works to improve the world, the human condition, while improving hers or his as well. So it's also about saving the planet. It's also about signing the Kyoto accord, and not giving all the street space and the transport budget to the worst transport, the automobile. And it's about not consumingtremendous amounts of gas and destabilizing the climate which is threatening the survival of many species including our own. Mid-October and we've had no frost. If you look out the window everything is green when it should be yellow. Look at the rivers drying up, the farmers failing. The thirst for profit… Kyoto was a conservative compromise. And Bush is proud not to sign it.

 Speaking of car culture, what do you think of my street Bob, St. Urbain?

It's a disgrace. This is a beautiful, residential, historical street and that it should be overtaken by car drivers who live far from the street, trucks delivering to Moncton, it's intolerable, dangerous.

Do you ever make connections between your activism in PAJU and your efforts to curb car culture?

Absolutely. It's part of the same struggle. If you look for the world's biggest companies, of the top ten 7 are auto and petroleum and these petroleum companies in particular give vast amounts of money to political parties and the Liberal Party of Quebec and the Bush campaign. Here, for about 100 meters of road, it costs more than 5 million and they find that money very easily. Yet they haven't got a measly 5 million dollars to support the maintenance and continuation of the The Green Network (beautiful bike paths), that connects many rural areas and that brings in 90 million tourist dollars a year. They have billions for all kinds of autoroutes that destroy homes and the city. So there's an example of the real movers and shakers. In the book "American Ground Transport" by Bradford Snell, you can read how the auto industry destroyed 100 streetcar lines in 45 cities, a well known fact. …There are no arms of mass destruction or ties to Al Qaeda, so what's the chief reason for the invasion of Iraq…?

 So would you say there's really only the one long front?

There's the one front. But it's not that long really. Because there's also the element of self-protection. Even though I'm 69, I don't want the planet to expire, I want the people to live long in a healthy way. And I myself want to too.

 What's the most outrageous thing you've ever done to make the world a better place?

More recently we de-paved the lane on my street, which was being used as a taxi run, very dangerous for the kids. So we de-paved it. Then sodded it. Without permission.

 Does the struggle ever get you down Bob?

Sometimes. Yes it gets me down. Palestine gets me down. Very much so.

And the second thing is Volleyball in the Park, which I co-founded in 1974. That in the last year or two has been taken over by evil elements by which I mean it's become competitive and exclusive, when it used to be social and inclusive .

 Isn't volleyball sort of frivolous compared to your other concerns?

It is apparently frivolous. But volleyball for me is a symbol, a metaphor for harmony. It was invented with that in mind. And it certainly has that potential. Not realized now. Because the joy of volleyball comes when the ball stays in the air, for a long time as it does with 6 on 6 players which it can't do when 2 on 2 are playing, nor with 4 on 4, because defense can't cover the space. It used to be for everyone, but now only 10% instead of 50% of the players are women. I used to call it "love dialectic" now it's "hate competition".

 Is there an author you go back to?

Yes, Ivan Illich.

 What do you find there?

I find there balance and correctness.In "Energy and Equity" he shows how, after a certain point, more energy gives negative returns. He brings his theory to transport where too much energy not only pollutes, kills, but becomes socially inequitable.

 You're a poet Bob, could you pluck five words out of the blue to describe yourself? Ecologist, visionary, pioneer, poet, bicyclist

Bob…Robert and his conjointe Lise leave for Salamanca to continue the struggle in Salamanca's car-free downtown. They'll be pushing for bike parking facilities it hasn't got, teaching the importance of natural lighting and trying to develop a new light source, cheaper and safer than fluorescence (the scourge of buildings everywhere). They also hope to become fully conversant with the regional dialect.

Family Poems
A Very Strange Love

Gramma Hedwig
Have you ever been loved
totally
from all pores
and all the chackras?
It doesn't happen very often
but it did happen to me.
It occurred when I was very small
a long time ago.
She had no inhibitions
for she was mad
and I was her spark
her only flame.
It wasn't the kind of love
I would have chosen
but what could I have done
for I was ignorant of worldly ways
as I had just been born.
Did you see the Elephant Man?
He did not look very nice
But John Merrick had a good heart
as did that lover of mine.
Her name was Hedwig
and she had been sick
for a long, long time
for her monthly flow had ceased
at the birth of Bert
the father of mine.
Her features grew
without limit
her forehead misshapen
as was her chin.
But she loved me deeply
in a profound and passionate way
she brought me soup
and crushed me against her breasts
in a very scary way.
So I will always love you
Hedwig
baba of mine.

© Robert Silverman 2000