Bike Mayor makes way to La Broquerie to promote trails

Winnipeg’s official Bicycle Mayor made her way to La Broquerie on Sunday to promote the RM’s network of trails.

Patty Wiens rode her bike with her partner and a friend almost five hours from Winnipeg to the LUD of La Broquerie and she said she enjoyed the ride.

“We took our time. We were lucky we had the wind on our back. So it was really great,” she said, noting drivers were very respectful.

Wiens, who is originally from Brazil, began her bike journey in Canada after not wanting to pay for her car and all the costs that come with owning a car, such as parking, maintenance, and gas.

She tentatively tried winter biking and quickly realized that it was amazing. She decided to sell her car and use her bike as a primary source of transportation. She is one of 200 official Bicycle Mayors around the world.

It was during a city planning conference in the spring that Wiens met La Broquerie’s development officer Ryan Curwin, who liked her advocacy work for active transportation, and asked her to come and support the municipality’s trail system. When she heard that La Broquerie was the only municipality that had active transportation in its secondary plan, making it a bylaw, she knew she had to visit.

“It becomes entrenched and hard to remove (once it’s a bylaw). So, I was like, I need to see this. So, the three of us rode our bikes all the way down from Winnipeg on the highway and made an adventure of it,” she said with a smile.

Curwin said over the past 10 years, council has been active in building new trails annually and to date has about 22 kms of pathway. He said a $600,000 federal grant combined with $400,000 from the municipality, which was collected from developers, has allowed for the expansion of the trail system. He added the municipality received a federal active transportation grant three years ago, which allowed it to pave 10 km of trail.

Council invests about $125,000 annually in the trail system, which is matched by the federal government making it an annual investment of $250,000. The ultimate goal is to pave all the trails and extend the year-round system outwards eventually all the way to Steinbach.

“We do have a trails master plan that shows where everything is connected, but it’s like a piece by piece, right? You’ve got to take your time. You can’t do it all in one year, but it’s one at a time,” said Reeve Ivan Normandeau, who said he and council are very much invested in keeping people healthy and active, especially young people.

Wiens said she feels empowered riding her bike year-round.

“Once you ride a bike, you start to see the world in a different way. And when you can see other communities the way that they see them, the way that you can slow down life a little bit to enjoy that, it makes it feel like we’re all connected,” she said.

“It just opens your world.”

La Broquerie LUD member Rick Lafreniere was at the bike event and said the LUD began looking at a trail system more than 10 years ago as the community is young and sports orientated. After the Tetrault family donated land to the park and surrounding area, the LUD decided to use it for a trail system.

“It feels good (to use the trails). It’s nice to get out and enjoy nature. As you do the trail, you’re just maybe a mile, a mile and a half out of town, but it feels like you’re away from everything. You stop at the river, you listen to the rapids, you calm your mind, you clear your head. It’s just a great activity to do,” he said.

Lafreniere was in his adaptive wheelchair where an electric bike was attached at the front and he said the paved trails make the system more accessible.

“Well, for disabled people like myself, it makes it a lot easier to wheel on or bike on. As you see, I have an electric bike that hooks up to my chair. And it’s just nice to get out in nature every day and enjoy what the planet has to offer, instead of staying indoors all the time,” he said.

Wiens said the environmental, mental and physical health, and financial benefits of biking are immense as is the social aspect and wanting to make a difference in the community you ride through.

She joked the fact that La Broquerie has 22 kms of active living trails, of which 10 km are paved, makes her want to move to the municipality.

“Makes me want to move here. It’s great. It’s amazing. And you know what?…It’s visionary because they’re doing it right from the start. Who knows? This could grow to be a large municipality and now you have the backbone for people to choose something other than a car…If you can get around by bike, why wouldn’t you?”