Author: Mark Wihak
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Pedestrian Pride
The Pedestrian Pride Project is based in Columbus, Missouri, USA, a city with a population around 130,000. “Founded by community advocate and walking commuter McKenzie Ortiz, Pedestrian Pride is rooted in the belief that the stories of those who walk and roll daily should be at the forefront of urban advocacy. ” Most of the…
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Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane has walked in places I never will and his books about his journeys – most of which take place on foot – have been some of my favourites over the past decade or so; he’s a wonderful writer. Macfarlane described his third book The Old Ways (2012) as being about, “the relationship between…
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Phone zombies, drifters, speed bumps
Lauren Elkin, whose book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City is profiled on the Resources page, contributed a radio essay to the BBC on the types of pedestrians one encounters on urban sidewalks: “Elkin reckons that the way people walk, their gait, is a signifier. It also tells us something about ourselves as we watch people…
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Walking out of Eden
Out of Eden Walk, Paul Salopek’s ongoing 38,000 kilometer trek traces the journeys our ancestors made as they walked out of Africa. You can follow the walk on Instagram, read the journey’s dispatches here, and listen to them on Soundcloud. In October 2025, he reached North America and spoke to the CBC’s Matt Galloway on…
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How walking changes the way we see the world
CBC Radio Saskatchewan’s Blue Sky devoted an episode to walking: “Ken Wilson spent days walking the car-centric bypass highway around Regina. He wrote about his experience in a new book Walking the Bypass: Notes on Place from the Side of the Road. Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway of the Buffalo People Arts Institute did a ceremonial walk dragging…
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In the footsteps of Celine and Jesse
There are films that place walking at the heart of the story. Two favourites that feature characters on foot are Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), in which the main characters Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) get to know one another while walking around nocturnal Vienna, and Before Sunset (2004), when the two characters…
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I’m walkin’ here!
If you’ve walked in a North American city, there’s a good chance you’ve witnessed and/or experienced something similar to that of Ratso and Joe in Midnight Cowboy – a driver makes a right hand turn without looking for pedestrians. In Canada, there are an average of 300 pedestrian fatalities every year, and thousands of injuries…
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Ken Wilson – Pedestrian
It was such a pleasure to talk with Ken (aka Dr. Ken Wilson). I’ve known Ken for a couple decades and I have seen how walking has become a vital and creative component of his life. He’s been very generous in sharing the sources of his walking knowledge, and introduced me to a range of…
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Walking The Bypass
Congratulations to Ken Wilson on the public launch of Walking The Bypass, published by University of Regina Press. Ken’s book evolved from a series of walks he took during the pandemic lockdown, and in its manuscript form Ken received the City of Regina Writing Award in 2022. Dan Piepenbring writes about Walking The Bypass in…
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The marketing of 10,000 steps
We walk for a variety of reasons: transportation, exploration, contemplation. Over the past decade there has been a lot of attention paid to walking as a form of exercise, and the idea that one needed to complete 10,000 steps a day to get a worthwhile health benefit; Reddit’s walking forums are full of anxious posts…
Project Pedestrian 