Rick Wolfe, bicycle collector and restorer, looks over a portion of his collection on display at the Elgin County Museum in St. Thomas, Ont., on May 11.Nicole Osborne/The Globe and Mail
Don’t ask Rick Wolfe which of the 200 vintage bicycles in his collection he likes the most. They’re too varied, and he’s spent too much time hunting them down and fixing them up to single out a favourite.
After decades of acquiring rare and wondrous machines – this one with an actual steering wheel, that one with a sinuous frame of steam-bent wood, this other one with a gear so huge the rider needed to be pushed into motion – he keeps looking, and keeps making oddball discoveries.
The basement of his home in Komoka, Ont., has a raised ceiling to accommodate the collection of them, which resides in climate-controlled security. His wife Marian has laid down the law: What happens in the basement is up to him, the upstairs is her domain.
The physical limitations of the basement restrict him somewhat. But he keeps acquiring, sometimes buying a whole collection of bikes and parts to secure one or two items. To preserve them in the country. To prevent them ending up in a dump.
“As a collector, you grow to the realization that ownership is only one-tenth,” he said. “Basically you’re a caretaker to these things. Because you know, we move on. Life takes us and they have to go to another.”
Such personal collections teeter on that line between obsession and labour of love. And as television programs such as Antiques Roadshow joust for attention with reality shows about hoarders, they speak to a contemporary tension: While stuff has become a dirty word, some stuff is still worth keeping.
The exhibition at the museum was recently extended a few months, through the start of September.Nicole Osborne/The Globe and Mail
They also recall a concept known as the cabinet of curiosities. In previous centuries, wealthy people would display oddities and treasures, gathering whatever appealed to them. Some of these became the basis of modern museum collections.
But then, as now, collecting requires discernment. Anyone can accumulate whatever they like, and while it may mean a lot to them that doesn’t make it meaningful.
Mike Baker, the curator at the Elgin County Heritage Centre, where some of Mr. Wolfe’s bicycles are on display, remembers a few instances of being approached by people and having to tell them gently that their treasured items lacked display value. The owner of a collection of 157 vintage crèches was particularly put out.
Mr. Wolfe’s collection appears to fall on the safe side of the line. He points out that there are vintage bicycles in the permanent collection of the Canadian Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. And there was a 2012 show about the art and machines of cycling’s early era at the Guggenheim’s Venice outpost to add credibility to the pursuit.
Wolfe considers himself more of a caretaker than a collector.Nicole Osborne/The Globe and Mail
They’ve been enough of a draw at the Elgin museum – Mr. Baker estimated attendance is up 50 per cent – that the exhibition was recently extended a few months, through the start of September.
The robust market for classic bicycles also speaks to their value. But Mr. Wolfe says he’s not chasing a payout with his collecting, noting that restorations can take him years of unpaid labour. He’s machined his own spokes for the wheels, cut his own leather for the saddle. He has an Amish connection in Ohio for making wooden wheel rims and bought the whole tire supply of a Dutch company going out of business.
“If you’re getting into it for the money, you’re going to be a poor man,” he said, quoting a collector who helped mentor him. “I find it fulfilling. Some guys want to sit and do crosswords. Some people shoot pool. I go to my workshop.”
One gets the sense that if two-wheelers had not been invented, Mr. Wolfe would have found something else to focus on. As a child he collected cigar boxes, admiring their designs. After leaving home as a teenager he earned extra money finding and selling antiquities. He eventually landed at Ford Motor Company, where he worked for decades as a painter, artist and detailer before retiring at 50.
Somewhere along the way he fell in love with vintage bicycles and motorcycles.
Mr. Wolfe loves to talk about where he found his bikes – tobacco kilns come up with surprising regularity – or their niche in history, and tends to find a willing ear for his stories at dozens of bikes shows annually. In late May he showed off his riding chops at an event at the Elgin museum. He was on a high wheel bike, one of those comical-looking yet dangerous 19th-century machines with a small back wheel and an enormous front one, garbed in a reproduction of the outfit worn by a local cycling club of the same era.
But he’s now 66, and not as spry as he used to be. The time he rode 1,200 kilometres in seven days on a high wheel, dodging full beer cans thrown at him in New York state, is a trip that won’t be repeated.
He’s aware of the sands slipping away. The antique bikes crowd tends to be as grey-haired as the opera set, so he’d love to nurture protégés who might continue his life’s passion. Some of his collection may end up in museums. But there needs to be a new generation as seized with saving and bringing back to life these old machines.
Mr. Wolfe recently tutored a younger man on how to put together a vintage high wheel bike. It’s not yet clear whether that achievement scratched an itch in the student, or ignited a passion.
“I’m waiting for a young person to come up behind me and grab the baton,” he said.