The Winnipeg Repair, Education and Cycling Hub is here to support local community bike shops and the people who use them

Walk down the stairs of the City of Winnipeg’s Animal Services building on Logan Avenue and you’ll notice the smell of rubber tires before you can see anything. The tires belong to the dozens of bicycles you’ll find in the basement — some fully intact, hanging in rows; others disassembled into their parts, stored along the concrete walls and in bins throughout the room. In the middle of the space are eight workstations, each equipped with the tools needed to fix a bike or build one from scratch.

For just over a month now, this subterranean space has been home to the city’s newest community bike shop: the Winnipeg Repair, Education and Cycling Hub — aka the W.R.E.N.C.H.

The non-profit organization was born out of discussions between existing community bike shops — eight currently operate throughout Winnipeg, each run entirely by volunteers — local cycling organizations, schools, individuals with an interest in bikes and the City, which was keen to do something useful with the unclaimed abandoned and stolen bikes stored at Winnipeg’s Bicycle Recovery Section, also located in the Logan Avenue building.

Community bike shops teach bicycle repair skills at no cost in an effort to encourage people to use bikes as transportation — particularly those who might not have access to bikes or classes for a variety of reasons — money, language barriers and age to name a few.

What makes the W.R.E.N.C.H. different from, say, The Bike Dump on Main Street or the South Osborne Bike Hub on Kylemore Avenue, however, is its mandate — in addition to running workshops, its mission is to support other shops by training volunteers and managing the distribution of recovered, repaired bikes (including those dropped off for recycling at Brady Road Landfill). It also boasts two full-time, paid staff positions, currently filled by Geoff Heath and Cara Fisher.

Heath, 28, is the W.R.E.N.C.H.’s mechanical director. He has worked as volunteer at community bike shops in Winnipeg for five years, and has also worked in shops in New Orleans and Austin.

"I think the big difference about what me and Cara do and what’s happening at the other community bike shops is we have the time to do the record-keeping, we have time to write documents, we have time to do the daytime programming that the other shops aren’t able to do ’cause people are generally working during the day," he explains. "We fill a different niche."

The W.R.E.N.C.H. has already partnered with several schools, Art City, the Family Centre and the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba, hosting workshops on basic repair, maintenance and road-safety skills, train-the-trainer classes, bike art workshops and make-your-own-bike programs (kids who complete the six- to nine-week course get to keep the bikes they build and are provided with helmets, locks and on-road training). It also holds weekly, open-shop drop-ins at which anyone can stop by and work on their bikes independently — emphasis on the work.

"You can’t expect that you’d come here and get your fancy, high-end bike fixed at the snap of your fingers," Heath says. "You’re going to be the one doing the work. We’re first and foremost an education centre."

Cara Fisher, 36, moved to Winnipeg from Vancouver in August to become the W.R.E.N.C.H.’s program director. She says Winnipeg’s community-mindedness and DIY-approach to local cycling initiatives is unique.

"One of the reasons I was intrigued and drawn to Winnipeg is all the volunteer-run community bike shops — it’s definitely not something that happens in Vancouver," she says.

That said, Fisher says it will take time and effort to change some Winnipeggers’ attitudes about cycling.

"The more people riding bikes, the more it becomes more mainstream, the more it’s accepted. The next step is just a long, hard battle of education around road safety," she says.

The W.R.E.N.C.H. (located at 1057 Logan Ave.) is holding an open house on Aug. 11 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Everyone is welcome. For more information, go to thewrench.ca.