The Ghost of Greenway
by Christopher Doty

Early one evening in the fall of 1998 I was bicycling home along the Thames River. It was dark and a heavy mist had settled upon the ground, making it difficult to see the bike path. As I rounded the bend at Greenway Park I noticed the figure of another cyclist ahead of me.

Rather than risk driving into a ditch, I decided to follow the other rider. As we both approached Springbank Drive my guide suddenly vanished. I put on the brakes and checked in all directions but he was nowhere to be found.

It was then that I realized I was standing outside an underpass named after Greg Curnoe. Curnoe, a celebrated London artist, had been killed in a bicycling accident to the west of London just six years earlier.

Had the ghost of Greg Curnoe guided me through that foggy path? I had produced a fairly flattering documentary portrait of the artist just a few months earlier. Was that his way paying me back - or had his spirit become a guardian angel for fellow cyclists?

My own explanation is less fanciful. As I made that turn, I was passing the Greenway Pollution Plant which is illuminated by very high and very bright lights. I believe the image in the fog bank ahead of me was actually my own shadow.

But I'm sure many of you will draw your own conclusions about what happened that evening without the help of my unimaginative deductions.