Mary Wilson’s main mode of transportation is the shoelace express – not a car, not a bike, but her own two feet.
The longtime New Westminster resident is hoping more people follow her lead this spring, with the return of Jane’s Walk, a series of free citizen-led strolls in communities around the world.
“Anyone can be a leader. It doesn’t have to be a walking lecture,” Wilson told the Record in an interview. “You just have to go where you enjoy walking and take people with you.”
The global movement honours the late Jane Jacobs, an urbanist and activist who observed city life around her, first in New York and then in Toronto. Her famous 1961 treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, introduced groundbreaking ideas about how cities should function, including championing local voices when it comes to urban planning and having more pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods.
“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody,” Jacobs wrote.
Wilson, meanwhile, stumbled upon Jane’s legacy three years ago by fluke. The 70-something-old was on the SkyTrain, heading off to her next adventure in the Lower Mainland.
“I’m a compulsive reader of local newspapers, always looking for information of where I can go to next, what will make me walk more,” she said. “I then came across this little ad advertising a Jane’s Walk. I thought, ‘What’s that? Who’s Jane?’ so I looked her up.”
Wilson, who was on the city’s pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee at the time, then took it upon herself to sign up New Westminster as a participating location.
“I thought, you know, we’ve got a bike-to-work week, we’ve got Show and Shine, but I thought, when are we going to do something for people who walk?” she recalled. “I said I’ll be the organizer. …The first year, people thought ‘What the hell you be doing here?’ The second year, they said, ‘Not bad.’ And this year, holy moly, when you see who has come to the table, I thought whoa.”
Wilson managed to round up 10 of her friends during the inaugural event in 2013 and put pressure on eight others to lead their own tours.
“We ended up walking from my house to the library because my books were overdue. That’s a legitimate Jane’s Walk because we went off road, down back lanes, through the school grounds and under some magnificent horse chestnut trees,” she said. “The people that came said they hadn’t been down that way before and were quite intrigued by the fact you can get around the city and that it can be interesting.”
The group took a different route home, cutting through the community centre and down a bike path instead.
While the weather didn’t cooperate last year, Wilson said between six and eight people, “drenched nevertheless,” came on her walk down 12th Street to the SkyTrain station.
There were 12 different tours overall in 2014, establishing New West as the second highest ranking Jane’s Walk event in Metro Vancouver (the City of Vancouver topped the list).
Given the growing buzz over the years, Tourism New West, TravelSmart and the city’s parks and rec department have all thrown their support behind the initiative, heavily promoting it on social media and other platforms.
“You start these things and think, there you are, I’ve proved a point, but then it got picked up, and I think it was because the timing was right. The master transportation plans came out in Surrey, in Vancouver, in New West, and they all made walking a priority,” Wilson said, adding she’s “super excited” about this year’s commute by foot.
“I’m going to Burnaby. I live a block away and there’s just so much stuff to do there. I think it’s important we recognize that we don’t have to get everything we need in New West, that you can cross the boundary,” she added.
Anyone can become a walk leader. To register a route, visit janeswalk.org. The event runs from May 1 to May 3.
