Albert has been an environmental lawyer for over 30 years, and an adjunct professor in natural resources at Osgoode Hall Law School (2008-2018). He is the author of Wheeling Through Toronto: A History of the Bicycle and its Riders, May 2024 (University of Toronto Press).

Albert is a community leader on road safety: a founding member of the Toronto Community Bikeways Coalition, the Avenue Road Safety Coalition, and the Coalition to Reduce Auto Size Hazards (C.R.A.S.H.). He is a co-founder of Bells on Bloor, which recently celebrated the installation of another extension to the Bloor bike lane, a key part of an east-west cycling spine for the city. His current work includes a report and recommendations calling on all levels of government to address the greater danger of pickup trucks and large SUVs to pedestrians and cyclists.

He has represented cycling groups before courts, agencies, and tribunals. In 2012, he served on the Ontario Chief Coroner’s expert panel on pedestrian safety. Albert has been named iBike TO’s Cycling Advocate of the Year, TCAT’s Active Transportation Champion, NOW Magazine’s Cycling Hero, and Share the Road’s Wheels of Change award recipient. In 2016, he was nominated for CBC’s Torontonian of the Year.

From 2001 to 2014, Albert worked for Ecojustice, a Canadian environmental law organization where he focused on climate change, energy, and wildlife issues. He led two private prosecutions resulting in the legal precedent, Podolsky v. Cadillac Fairview, which established the liability of building owners for bird-window strikes that cause millions of preventable bird fatalities.

In 1997-98, Albert served as an investigator with the United Nations in Guatemala culminating in the “Memory of Silence” report documenting the genocide of indigenous peoples by the military dictatorship. From 1990-96 he was a prosecutor with Ontario’s Ministry of Environment. He is a former chair of the Education Rights Task Force, leading to provincial law reform ensuring that children of parents with ambiguous immigration status can attend school.

His writing on topics ranging from social justice and transport to humour and adventure have been published in Canadian newspapers, magazines, journals, and on-line publications.

He is fluent in English, French, German, and Spanish along with a rudimentary knowledge of Mandarin (thanks to a six-month sojourn in Beijing). He counts among his adventures traveling across Africa by barge, bush taxi and box car; bicycling across Europe; crossing the Atlantic in a freighter; and circumnavigating the City of Toronto on foot, covering 140 km over five days.

He is on the board of the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP), where he chairs the Communications and Advocacy Working Group.

This website contains a compilation of Albert Koehl’s published writings, media interviews, and select presentations. The site also includes his advocate’s transport guide, Road Follies.

Contact me at: albert@koehl.ca