Born To Walk

The Transformative Power of a Pedestrian Act

• Publisher: Ecw Press Digital
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781770906983
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

The humble act of putting one foot in front of the other transcends age, geography, culture and class, and is one of the most economical and environmentally responsible modes of transit. Yet with our modern fixation on speed, this healthy pedestrian activity has been largely left behind. At a personal and professional crossroads, writer, editor and obsessive walker Dan Rubinstein travelled throughout the UK, the US and Canada to walk with people who saw the act not only as a form of transportation and recreation, but also as a path to a better world.

SOURCES

The majority of the interviews referenced below were completed specifically for this book. Others were simultaneously conducted for articles that were published in The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, The Economist, enRoute, Canadian Business, Ottawa Magazine, Spacing, Cottage Life and explore, where portions of the book have appeared.

PROLOGUE

“Perhaps walking is best imagined”: Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Penguin, 2001), 250.

“I walk in order to somatically medicate myself”: Will Self, “Leaving His Footprints on the City,” New York Times, 23 March 2012.

“Mediated boredom”: Evgeny Morozov, “Only Disconnect,” The New Yorker, 28 October 2013.

“[A] state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned,” Solnit, Wanderlust, 5.

“French philosopher Frédéric Gros”: Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking (Verso, 2014).

“British author Nick Hunt”: Nick Hunt, Walking the Woods and the Water: In Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Footsteps From the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn (Nicholas Brealey, 2014).

“Historian Matthew Algeo”: Matthew Algeo, Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport (Chicago Review Press, 2014).

“Naturalist Trevor Herriot”: Trevor Herriot, The Road Is How: A Prairie Pilgrimage Through Nature, Desire and Soul (HarperCollins Canada, 2014).

1: BODY

Interviews with Stanley Vollant and other Innu Meshkenu walk participants, February and March 2013, between Manawan, QC, and Rapid Lake, QC.

“Canada’s 1.4 million Aboriginal people”: www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-011-x/99-011-x2011001-eng.cfm.

“Aboriginal men and women die an average”: Statistics Canada, Life Expectancy, www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-645-x/2010001/life-expectancy-esperance-vie-eng.htm.

“Infant mortality rate”: Assembly of First Nations, “Fact Sheet — Quality of Life of First Nations,” June 2011, www.afn.ca/uploads/files/factsheets/quality_of_life_final_fe.pdf.

“Chronic medical condition”: Health Canada, First Nations and Inuit Health, www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fniah-spnia/diseases-maladies/index-eng.php.

“First Nations children … overweight or obese”: Public Health Agency of Canada, Obesity in Canada — Snapshot, www .phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/2009/oc/index-eng.php.

“A full-blown crisis”: Heart and Stroke Foundation, “A perfect storm of heart disease looming on our horizon,” 25 January 2010, www.heartandstroke.com/atf/cf/{99452D8B-E7F1-4BD6-A57D-B136CE6C95BF}/Jan23_EN_ReportCard.pdf.

“Statistics on … incarceration”: Office of the Correctional Investigator, Annual Report 2012–2013, www.oci-bec.gc.ca/cnt/rpt/annrpt/annrpt20122013-eng.aspx.

“Most common cause of death”: Health Canada, First Nations & Inuit Health, www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fniah-spnia/promotion/mental/index-eng.php.

“Youngest and fastest-growing demographic group”: Statistics Canada, Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-011-x/99-011-x2011001-eng.cfm.

“Indian Time”: Duncan McCue, Reporting in Indigenous Communities, www.riic.ca/the-guide/in-the-field/indian-time/.

Interviews with Jean-Charles Fortin, February and March 2013, between Manawan, QC, and Rapid Lake, QC.

“Americans are in the habit”: Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 101.

“A pedometer study”: Tom Vanderbilt, “The Crisis in American Walking,” Slate, 10 April 2012, www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html.

“The decline of walking”: Vanderbilt, “The Crisis in American Walking.”

Tom Vanderbilt, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) (Vintage, 2008).

“London physiologist Richard Doll”: Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill, “Smoking and Carcinoma of the Lung: Preliminary Report,” British Medical Journal 2 (30 September 1950): 739–748.

“British health minister Iain Macleod”: The National Archives, The Cabinet Papers 1915–1984, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/one-page.htm.

“London doctor Jerry Morris”: Simon Kuper, “The Man Who Invented Exercise,” FT Magazine, 12 September 2009, www .ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e6ff90ea-9da2-11de-9f4a-00144feabdc0 .html#axzz3E3QFLQUS.

“Coronary Heart-Disease and Physical Activity of Work,” Jerry Morris, The Lancet 262, no. 6795 (November 1953): 1053–1057.

“Upright ambulation”: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/walking; and Erin Wayman, “Becoming Human,” Smithsonian, 6 August 2012, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/becoming-human-the-evolution-of-walking-upright-13837658/?no-ist.

“Using a stiff leg”: Jennifer Ackerman, “The Downside of Upright,” National Geographic, July 2006.

“The Brain from Top to Bottom”: thebrain.mcgill.ca.

“Narrow birth canals”: Ackerman, “The Downside of Upright.”

“A lot of basic movements”: Peter Tyson, “Our Improbably Ability to Walk,” NOVA, 20 September 2012, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/our-ability-to-walk.html.

“Walking upright … made our species smarter”: Richard Shine and James Shine, “Delegation to automaticity: the driving force for cognitive evolution?” Frontiers in Neuroscience 8, no. 90 (29 April 2014).

“Evolution...