Several happy children gathered in an East Hamilton neighbourhood on Saturday to receive their highly anticipated free bicycles and helmets, an ongoing initiative that has helped hundreds of families since 2020.
For the fourth year in a row, kids arrived at the BGC Hamilton-Halton building on Ellis Avenue with excitement.
The boys and girls club is providing 14 brand new bikes to children who don’t already have one.
“We’ve always tried to encourage kids to be active and also to be outdoors and one of those activities that I love myself is cycling but it can be a barrier for kids and families especially with the cost of everything nowadays as well,” CEO of BGC Hamilton-Halton, Duane Dahl says.
Dahl says more than 4,000 kids have memberships with the Boys and Girls Club.
“We really get to know those kids. We build relationships and we understand when there are kids who are trying to do something with cycling and the reason that child isn’t able to participate is because they don’t have a bike,” Dahl says.
“So this morning I was excited to get a new bike because my other one was broken,” one bike recipient said.
Other kids were just as excited and almost forgot that the big day was today.
“I didn’t remember I was getting a new bike… but then I remembered and I was like ‘yippee!'”
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Parents were also smiling proudly as their kids learned to ride bikes safely.
“It means that Mary can finally get a chance to learn how to ride a bike, we really didn’t have a bike before this so it should be a fun and exciting summer.”
Dahl says getting to learn how to ride a bike for the first time is a memory that lasts a lifetime.
“I still remember getting my first bike when I was a kid and my world grew 10 sizes in one day,” Dahl says.
“I talked to a few moms who were in tears and said to me you’ve changed our lives, we couldn’t have afforded a bike and so there’s a really amazing feeling when you give a kid a bike,” Founder of Share the Road Cycling Coalition, Eleanor McMahon says.
This initiative was made possible with the help of the coalition, who donated around $2,500 following Greg’s Cycle for Kids last year.
“We started a ride in memory of my husband Greg Stobbart who was killed while riding his bike in 2006,” McMahon says.
McMahon says her husband loved to ride bikes, and this initiative would’ve made him proud.
“The best thing we can do in his memory is give that gift to other children which he would love.”
The next Greg’s Cycle for Kids ride will happen sometime around September.
