‘If I could do this for the rest of my life, I’d like to fill in the world,’ says artist and ambitious cyclist Arlin ffrench
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Artist Arlin ffrench estimates it took about 6500 kilometres and three years to bike every street in Vancouver. The task was made more challenging as construction in the city boomed while he cycled. New streets were being built as he knocked other streets off his list.
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On Strava, a GPS app ffrench used to map his progress, the colourful lines tracking his three year quest built in intensity. The routes filled in the downtown core like a splotch of blood and spread outward, nosing across bridges and threading through residential streets like delicate veins and arteries.
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ffrench, who uses the double-lower cased historic Gaelic and Norman spelling of his family name, is an adventurer.
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Sunrise
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Mapping Vancouver, a project completed from 2016-2019, he survived trucks roaring past on Knight Street, the harrowing unprotected lanes of East 12th, and his own personal “white whales,” the cul-de-sacs with their frustrating turn-arounds.
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ffrench traversed every bike route in Vancouver, burning through tires, broken handlebars and one seat theft, watching the city gentrify and transform around him in real time.
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Now the Vancouver-based artist has added the streets of Burnaby and New West to his list of accomplishments, and is “poking away” at Richmond, as well as North and West Vancouver. In 2022 he biked most of the centre of Reykjavik while in that city on an art residency; he has started on Manhattan and this summer he completed all of Stewart B.C.
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Tomorrow, the world? Maybe.
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“If I could do this for the rest of my life, I’d like to fill in the world,” he said.
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British mountaineer George Mallory, when asked by a reporter why climb a mountain, famously said “Because it’s there.”
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For ffrench, too, the street cycling project emerged out of its thereness. He started by mapping his routes to work on Strava, and became entranced by the pattern of lines that emerged on the screen.
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“I’ve been fascinated with maps since I was a kid,” said ffrench, who is both a visual artist and tattoo artist.
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He began switching up his routes to work, filling in the Strava map street by street.
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Mapping by bike showed him the city in ways he hadn’t pictured it before. While biking, he was close enough to see details at a ground level while the screen capture of his map gave him a birds’ eye view.
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“A lot of Vancouver streets are boring,” he said. But some offer a fascinating window into the strange beauty of ordinary life: stunning gardens, sections of boulevards planted with the exact same tree. Once, even, a man walking a pig.
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“On a bike I can be more aware of all things around me because there is nothing between me and anything else: you get the sights, sounds, and smells.”
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It’s not about getting to a destination quickly so much as it is about enjoying the ride along the way.
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His experience as a courier in the aughts taught him how to stay safe on the road. “I wear a helmet,” he said. “I triple check intersections.”
