The family did not cancel the son. They postponed the white bicycle. Alex Côté, 11, struck in June on avenue des Sablonnières, near boulevard Raymond, in Beauport, Quebec City. Crews found him in cardiac arrest. He died in hospital. The father, Dominic Côté, wrote on Facebook, days before Sunday 18 October: they want the moment to remain a positive, respectful gathering, not a source of division. The intention, “full of love”. To make people feel the danger of cycling there. To honour the boy. The hate messages arrived before the white paint.

A ghost bike, vélo fantôme: a white bicycle at the site of a fatal crash. Souliers et vélos fantômes Québec helps families. Mathieu Murphy-Perron, of the collective, saw some of the comments. He did not quote them. He called them “wildly inappropriate”. Some took issue with the memorial itself: people might come close, pedestrians near traffic. In 13 years in Montreal, he said, they have not seen that, though the white bikes are many. Others tied the speed bumps to the child’s death. Murphy-Perron: the bumps were planned before the crash. “Haven’t you had enough… What more do you want?” Never, in 13 years, a wave of hatred aimed at those who had lost someone. Especially an 11-year-old.

Radio-Canada: after the death the city put in 13 speed tables in the sector, on Berrouard and on des Sablonnières. Online, the additions are denounced. The event circulated in neighbourhood groups. Dominic: a heavy heart, to keep the meaning of the gesture. The initiative came from the family. It is not abandoned. It is postponed. Councillor Mélanie Sauvé: they did not want it to spill over. Mayor Bruno Marchand: profoundly outraged. “Dans quel monde on vit pour que quelqu’un pense que c’est une bonne idée de déverser sa haine aux parents…?”

The death reopened calls for protection in residential streets where children walk and cycle. That is an infrastructure argument. The messages to the parents are something else. Anyone who mixes them turns a bump into an insult and a child into an argument.

The driver, in the texts consulted, is not named as convicted. The crash remains, not a sentence. The family asked for time. The collective asked for solidarity. The mayor asked for a world in which hatred does not reach the parents. The white bicycle, when it comes, will stand on the asphalt. Until then it stands on a postponement.

A ghost bike does not judge a case. It marks a place. In Beauport the place is marked by bumps, by flowers and by a Facebook post that said stop, for Sunday. Not for ever.

Image: Wilfredor, Château Frontenac at dusk, Quebec City, 7 September 2022, CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph is of the old city, not the Beauport intersection.

Sources consulted: Family of Quebec boy killed while cycling calls off ghost bike memorial, cites hate messages — CBC News; White-bike installation postponed over ‘hate messages’ in Beauport — Radio-Canada.