Nearly two months after losing her father, Janessa Mann still has no answers about the circumstances of his death — but the ordeal has made her passionate about cycling safety.
On Sept. 26, Karl Mann, 65, was injured while riding his bicycle near Ottawa’s Bridlewood neighbourhood in the city’s west end. Emergency crews found him around 5:15 p.m. near the roundabout where Old Richmond Road meets Hope Side Road.
According to Ottawa police, Mann was hurt “under unknown circumstances.” Paramedics transported him to the Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital where his family stayed by his bedside.
For his daughter, it was déjà vu: Ten years earlier, the family had rushed to the ER after Mann was hospitalized by a stroke.
“At that point, we had gotten a miracle,” Janessa Mann said. “They got the clot out of his brain right away and he recovered to a point where you couldn’t see any brain damage on the scans.”
This time, the outcome was different: A few days after he was rushed to hospital, Karl Mann died of his injuries.
“We were really hoping that we would get another miracle this time, but we didn’t,” Janessa Mann said. “I wanted another 20 years with my dad.”
No answers
Mann remembered her father as an avid outdoorsman and cyclist who biked to work and participated in the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour. He would even cycle to their cottage in western Quebec.
“He always joked it was safer … than a car,” Janessa Mann remembered with a chuckle.
She said her father was familiar with the route where he was found injured on Sept. 26. The area features a mix of multi-use pathways, paved shoulders and marked crosswalks, but no segregated bike lanes.
Ottawa police have not yet declared Mann’s injuries the result of a collision, including a hit-and-run. Though investigators are searching for the driver of an SUV who “may have crucial information,” police told Mann her father could have suffered a “medical incident” before he was found injured.
Mann, who’s also a cyclist, is skeptical.
I just want to know what happened to him.– Janessa Mann
“You can’t tell me … that an accomplished cyclist like him could have had the amount of damage he had on his own,” Janessa said.
Ottawa police have refused to answer CBC’s questions about Karl Mann’s death and declined an interview.
“I don’t think I need someone to be charged with anything or go to jail, because that’s not going to bring him back,” Janessa Mann said. “I just want to know what happened to him.”
Provincial restrictions
Just two weeks after Mann’s death, the province proposed legislation that would force municipalities to get approval from the province before building new bike lanes that would result in a loss of vehicular lanes. Premier Doug Ford has confirmed he’s prepared to tear out existing bike lanes, too.
Janessa Mann said she decided to speak out because she believes there’s already a lack of safe cycling infrastructure in Ottawa, and said it’s “really scary” to think existing bike lanes could be taken away.
“It’s not worth the money and time and lives it will cost,” she said. “My one-year-old daughter, she’s not going to know [her grandfather]. And I don’t want that to be the case for any other one-year-old because of unsafe cycling infrastructure, unsafe drivers, because it hurts. That’s not fair.”
Mann believes the proposed legislation would have made her father “pretty mad,” and now plans to get more involved in advocating for bike safety.
She sees potential danger for cyclists and pedestrians everywhere, including roads near her home with no sidewalks and cyclists forced to use the shoulder of rural roads.
When Mann and her mother were on their way to her father’s memorial, they watched another car blow past a stop sign.
“We had such a visceral reaction to that, because is that what happened to dad?” she recalled wondering. “Was someone just not paying attention and didn’t understand how to drive through a roundabout? And now he’s gone.”