This story has been updated since the original post
Mayor Lisa Helps says her bike was “sabotaged” while attending a climate change event Saturday night at the Vic Theatre.
The bike had padlocks attached to both tires, which she said was both dangerous and mean. Helps said she strongly believes her bike was targeted because she was listed as a speaker of the event, and photos of her bike had previously been publicized.
“If I hadn’t noticed them, particularly the front one, I would have gone head over handlebars on my bike,” she said, adding that she felt annoyed and “pissed off.”
Helps seemed to suggest the incident could be related to the controversy over bike lanes, and said it won’t stop her from moving forward.
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“I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the bike lane project, that’s become this sense of bikes vs. cars, but really what the point of the project is to create more transportation choices, to create more health and well-being infrastructure, to create improvements to the public realm for pedestrians, for anyone who’s on the street , whether they’re walking or driving or cycling.
“I’m kind of just using this as an opportunity to say, lets stop this so-called divide between people who ride bikes and people who drive cars. This infrastructure is meant to serve everyone.”
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Helps said she filed a police report, but she thinks police have better things to do than finding out who put the locks on her bike.
The event Helps was attending was a film screening of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which was followed by a presentation of the City’s Victoria Climate Leadership Program.
lauren.boothby@vicnews.com
