Around the World Awheel: The Adventures of Karl M Creelman

Hans B. Neumann teaches history at Scarborough College, University of
Toronto.

From its beginnings, Canada has always had its share of intrepid
travelers, but few can rival the miles logged by one of the least-known
members of this exclusive club. Karl Creelman, a native of Truro, Nova
Scotia, became the first Canadian to successfully complete an
around-the-world trip by bicycle between 1899 and 1901, logging 51,283
miles, more than 15,000 of them on bicycle. Drawing upon Creelman’s
own log and scrapbook, as well as various newspaper accounts of the
trip, Brian Kinsman, himself a native of Truro, charts his subject’s
courageous undertaking from beginning to end.

Creelman first biked from Nova Scotia west to Vancouver, continued his
biking tour in Australia, and then proceeded to India, Egypt, and
finally Europe. Given the primitive conditions of the roads at that
time, coupled with the unsophisticated bicycles available to him, it
seems a minor miracle that Creelman was able to complete the trip at
all. Even more astounding, he wore out only five pairs of (nontubeless)
tires and three chains over the course of his globe-spanning tour.
Regrettably, the indefatigable cyclist never wrote his own literary
account of the journey. Though his text is informative, Kinsman’s
often stuffy and pedestrian prose fails to capture the thrill and
immediacy of a small-town Nova Scotia lad seeing the big world for the
first time. Nevertheless, the book remains a testament to the grit and
determination of a truly remarkable Canadian.