📈 The Peak Weekend Reader

Good morning. And welcome to the new Peak Weekend Reader. 

This new and improved weekend edition, complete with original Canadian business reportage and handpicked recommendations, will be one part of our new Peak Premium subscription offering. 

You heard that right: The Peak now has a premium subscription.

We are introducing a subscription so that we can invest directly in original reporting and Canadian journalism. 

For the cost of two coffees (or one really fancy latte) per month, subscribers will get ad-free newsletters, a premium weekend edition (this one and the upcoming Peak World Dispatch), access to new premium games, and more. You can read all about it here.

For readers who opt not to subscribe (we get it, money doesn’t grow on trees), you will still enjoy The Peak as you know it every weekday, with access to the mini-crossword, sudoku, Codebreaker, and any other new free games we launch in the future.

This edition of the Weekend Reader is free for everyone. If you like it and want to subscribe, you can do so here — we’re offering subscriptions at half-price for the first 200 people to sign up, so it pays to be early.

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⛳️ Even without more money, people who golf are living longer on average. Good news for anyone trying to justify their chronic golf habit. A study found that golfers’ mortality rates are up to 52% lower than those of the general population. Researchers also found that the lower your handicap (a.k.a. the better at golf you are), the longer you're likely to live. 

🍺 JPMorgan has opened the hottest bar in Manhattan. A new pub opened in the JPMorgan offices, reserved strictly for its 10,000 employees, has become so popular that bankers are having to reserve tables weeks in advance. In addition to the long wait lists, workers had the unique displeasure of seeing their CEO’s face screen-printed onto their pints of Guinness before Jamie Dimon banned the practice.

👶 Your 40s are scientifically proven to be the most exhausting decade of life. A professor of anatomy at the University of Bristol found that in your 40s, recovery and sleep are the hardest to come by of any decade in life. Unsurprisingly to anyone with little ones at home, the driving factor of this perpetual exhaustion is parenthood.

✈️ Business class seats could be the secret airline emissions culprit. New research suggests that reorganizing airplanes’ cabins — and cutting business class seats entirely — could slash CO2 emissions by up to half. Given that these swanky seats account for 75% of total profits on some flights, this feels like a non-starter.

Business history is littered with stories of boom and bust cycles, from the tulip fever of 1630s Holland to the Y2K dot-com bubble. Today, the cycling industry is going through one. 

You might not have heard about it, but the Canadian biking world has been struggling through a rough patch going on four years now, with independent bike shops shuttering, bike manufacturers filing for creditor protection, and industry outlets publishing headlines like “The mountain bike industry is in free fall — and no one knows where it’ll land.” So, what happened? 

During the pandemic, cycling took off like a BMX rider hitting a mega ramp. Urbanites looking for ways to commute that didn’t involve crowded transit options started buying road bikes to get around. Meanwhile, other people bored at home looking for something, anything, to preoccupy their time (besides binging Tiger King) spent a little bit of CERB money on a mountain bike and took up a new hobby. 

Statistics Canada retail data during the spring, the peak sales season for bike shops, paints a clear picture. In the second quarter of 2019, Canadians made 455,104 purchases related to bicycles, biking equipment, and biking accessories. Then, in Q2 of 2020, when the pandemic was in full force, that number exploded to 699,657 — a staggering 53.7% increase. Purchases stayed elevated over the next two years, peaking in Q2 of 2022 with 729,942 such sales. 

But in 2023, the smoothly paved asphalt suddenly turned into a rocky, tire-popping off-road. Supply chain snarls meant that many bike shops, which were already struggling to maintain inventory levels, simply didn't have the supplies they needed ahead of peak sales season. By the time those delayed shipments came in the fall, shops had missed out on sales opportunities, and the biking boom had started to fade. 

“There was a complete under-supply during the pandemic,” explains Trish Merino, the parts lead and co-owner of Urbane Cyclist, a worker-owned co-op bike shop that’s operated in Toronto for almost 20 years. ”Then they had compensatory production, and there was way too much.”  

Years later, bike shops are still dealing with the ripple effects and a market that’s now drowning in an oversupply due to the emergence of Asian D2C bike brands. Many stores now resort to price-slashing deals during peak sales season — which once would have been unthinkable  — just to offload old models. At the same time, there continues to be a chronic supply shortage for bike parts. That’s a major problem considering parts and accessories are historically how shops do the bulk of their business. 

“There’s a hesitance of vendors to dig in and buy the parts we need because shops are spending less money in response to people spending less money,” Adam Myers, another worker-owner at Urbane elaborates, “I don’t even blame the vendors. They don’t want to be stuck with excess inventory.“

Urbane has always been a commuter-focused bike shop rather than one dedicated to mountain biking or road racing, but it narrowed its focus even further upon moving to a smaller location last year after its old lease ran up. Urbane used to have its own line of bikes, with the basement filled to the brim with vehicles; that’s not the case anymore. “What we sell now is less spatially demanding,” Myers says. “We switched focus from more conventional bikes to oversized cargo bikes. Historically, we have way less than we used to.”

Many of these cargo bikes are e-bikes, a relatively new development in the cycling world, which also played a role in the COVID sales bumps as they were adopted en masse by the food delivery industry. It’s a product category that Urbane has seen an "exponential uptick” in interest and could be a path forward to reviving the industry, but only if it can clear some serious hurdles.

“When I rode my first e-bike, it was a transformative experience, like it is for many people,” says entrepreneur and urban mobility advocate Kevin McLaughlin, “[They] make it super easy to go places, in terms of not feeling tired or old or whatever.” In 2019, inspired by his first ride and looking for a new business venture, he founded Zygg E-Bikes, an e-bike seller and renter that bills itself as “the largest used e-bike retailer in Canada.”

However, much like their Luddite counterparts, e-bikes have fallen on hard times since pandemic highs. Over the past few years, some of the most popular D2C e-bike brands including Vanmoof, Rad Power, and Cowboy either went bankrupt or came perilously close to going bankrupt before being acquired, as they were unable to scale up at a sustainable rate. There are also persistent concerns about batteries catching fire (Rad Power in particular has been dinged for spontaneous combustion issues).

Today, Zygg is feeling the pressure to slash bike costs amid a wave of oversupply. It also found itself victim to supplier-related issues, plus changes to Canada’s education visa system ending the temporary policy that afforded international students unlimited off-campus work hours. This affected clientele in the food delivery sector, a major customer segment for Zygg.

“We have shrunk our own business considerably,” McLaughlin says. “We had a very expansionist, ambitious outlook, and have gotten small and focused on some of our core things. We’ll see how this year goes and what a future for us in the business looks like.” 

Bottom line: The cycling industry is particularly cyclical — there’s a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to its various booms and busts — so it’s possible that a rebound is just around the corner. Still, it’s unclear if the bottom has fallen out, or if there’s further to go. If there’s a silver lining, many of those people who picked up cycling during the pandemic have kept on pedalling. “There are people who stuck with it and are really excelling at things like racing,” Merino says, “I find it inspiring.”—QH

Canada and Japan strike a new partnership. Mark Carney was in Tokyo to sign a new comprehensive strategic partnership alongside Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. It includes pledges to boost energy trading, increase naval cooperation, and deepen critical mineral ties. Carney, who once lived in Japan, even gave some remarks in Japanese. (CTV News) 

Trump says he expects “unconditional surrender” from Iran. In a Truth Social post (where else?), Donald Trump proclaimed that “there will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” For good measure, he also told CNN that “Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon,” but regime change in Iran is the current priority. (Global News) 

The Bank of Canada used the blockchain for a bond. Canada’s central bank, RBC, and TD completed a pilot where they tested the issuing, trading, and settling of a $100 million bond via tokenization on a digital platform. The experiment comes as the BoC heightens its interest in digital assets, including looking into federal stablecoin legislation. (CoinDesk) 

📡 What else is on our radar:

Mise En Scene delivers irresistible garage rock straight from small-town Manitoba. The scenic town of Gimli is home to a rich history of Icelandic culture, a great film festival, a very peculiar pizza place, and one of the country’s most slept-on dynamic indie rock duos.  

Mise En Scene, consisting of vocalist-guitarist Stefanie Johnson and drummer Jodi Dunlop, have struck gold with Drive-Thru Confessional. Their first album since 2020 is a shimmering collection of hazy jams, both nautical and heartland. Think Alvvays if they grew up on Lake Winnipeg instead of the Atlantic. For a taster, the lead single Leftovers is as good as it gets.

🔥 What else is hot? 

Each Weekend Reader, a friend of the letter will share, to paraphrase the song, a few of their favourite things. This week, The Peak’s senior writer Quinn Henderson picks five everyday essentials.

The North Face Thermoball Traction Mules: My feet immediately turn into ice cubes once the temperature drops; it doesn’t even matter if I have the heat cranked. I’ve had many pairs of slippers in the past, but these are far and away my favourite. Cozy, nicely insulated, and sturdy enough for brief forays outside. They’re on my feet literally all day when I’m at home. 

Double Cream Earl Grey tea: I’ve never liked coffee (go ahead, call my palate unrefined) but I’m a big tea drinker. I typically start every weekday with a hot cuppa, sipping as I catch up on the day’s headlines. I find the ritual spiritually replenishing. My favourite blend is a Double Cream Earl Grey from Say Tea, an adorable shop in Toronto’s Bloor West Village.

My Vitaly chain: For most of my life I never wore jewellery, mostly because I thought that I couldn’t pull it off. But for my birthday a few years ago, my partner bought me a chain from Toronto’s own Vitaly. It’s gold-coloured, and made out of recycled skyscrapers and car parts. It really changed my self-conception; I feel so much confidence whenever I wear it now. 

Letterboxd Pro subscription: I’m a big movie lover (or cinephile if you wanna get fancy with it) and go on Letterboxd multiple times a day. The Pro subscription gives me access to granular stats that let me be extra-annoying about my viewing habits. 

Muji Gel Ink Ballpoint Cap Pen 0.38 mm: This is simply a high-quality writing utensil. My preference is for black ink — it looks more profesh.  

And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, it’s time to play The Peak’s Saturday Crossword, the daily sudoku, and Codebreaker. 

And when you’re done, find the fake headline hidden in this batch of news items.

Keep scrolling for the answer.

Don’t pour one out for the Teutonic wine tycoon, because #1 is the fake headline.