Michael Bryant is having a really bad week. In the same week we buried Ted Kennedy, the former Ontario attorney general is facing his Chappaquiddick.Bryant is now facing criminal negligence causing death and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle charges, after an angry clash with a cyclist on Bloor Street on Monday night.
The cyclist, a bicycle courier named Darcy Allan Sheppard, spent his last few minutes on earth clinging to the side of Bryant's Saab, before being flung into a mailbox and dying in front of the Bloor Street Sephora.
My heart goes out Sheppard's family. It's a tragic and ridiculous way to die.
But I don't think there's a driver in Toronto who doesn't have some heart for Bryant. Who hasn't come close to hitting a cyclist at some time or other? Who hasn't felt some rage when a cyclist darts out in front of your moving vehicle or feared for your own life or the life of the cyclist when you hit the brakes in order to avoid them?
The particular stretch along Bloor where the altercation happened has been torn up, rerouted and narrowed all summer long.
There may even be a mitigating factor -- media reports today are suggesting that police spoke to Sheppard earlier in the evening after an altercation with his ex girlfriend. Alcohol may have been a factor.
But that's no excuse, really. Along with the legal responsibility of driving a motor vehicle comes the moral responsibility.
Bryant might not serve any time, but his career died on that sidewalk along with Sheppard.
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