‘Cycling is for everyone’: Bike Week Winnipeg returns for 11th year

It’s time to break out those bicycles from their winter sleep.

Bike Week Winnipeg has kicked off, with over 100 city-wide events to celebrate the green commute.

“It’s really just a weeklong of celebrating bikes and bike-adjacent activities,” said Daniel Perry, who’s on the board of Bike Week Winnipeg.

“The message of Bike Week really just boils down to, cycling is for everyone.”

Perry, the ultimate cycling advocate, hasn’t owned a car in eight years and cycles everywhere he goes.

“I see it as an avenue for freedom and independence,” he explained. “I can get around any day, just on my own volition. It’s also been an avenue for connecting with other people.”

Bike Week producer Andraea Sartison and her team are preparing for Tuesday’s Bike to Work Day, where commuters all over Winnipeg can check out different cycling pit stops in the morning – from 6:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.

“We’re so excited that there’s 108 events happening this week all over the city and we have 76 pit stops to participate in Bike to Work Day,” Sartison said.

“They kind of get to have carte blanche in how they engage with commuters as they cycle by. Every year we see very creative things.

“Live music is one thing that we often see, and lots of cyclists will come with a bag and they’ll just keep stuffing it as they go to the different pit stops and they’re always happy when they make it to the all-day pit stop here at The Forks.”

Sartison adds many of the stops will offer free bike repair.

“Whether that’s being put on by The Wrench or some of our friendly mechanics that we know,” she said.

Perry says Bike Week has “definitely gone through some evolution,” and new this year is a focus on diversity and reconciliation.

“The biking landscape in Winnipeg has really expanded and also evolved in turnout,” Perry explained. “Different kinds of people on bikes and different bikes that people are riding.”

Sartison says reconciliation was very important to the team at Bike Week. In fact, the week kicked off Sunday with a reconciliation ride.

“These are pathways that we use as modern people here, whether we are settlers or whether we are Indigenous,” she said. “But they have a long history, especially when we talk about gathering here around The Forks and what a special site this is.

“It really allows us to engage with the land that we are on and to take special pathways that have maybe been travelled by many people before us.”

Perry says some credit for the continued success of Bike Week – and having more Winnipeggers embrace life on two wheels – has to be given to “progress that has been made in infrastructure development in the city for safe, separated cycling routes.

“Additions of safe, separated infrastructure has created equity in terms of cycling. We’re seeing a lot of different kinds of people.”

Bike Week runs through to June 14. The final event is the annual Bike Week Bash, a free, family-family event at the legislative grounds.