Vélo Québec celebrated 50 years of cyclist activism in 2017. Initially a small non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging young people to get on their bikes, Vélo Québec now operates on all fronts to develop and promote cycling.
Since its inception, Vélo Québec has done its utmost to help promote biking in Québec: organizing events and trips, providing consulting services to municipalities, developing active transportation programs for schools, as well as organizations and municipalities, and publishing magazines, books, guides and maps. Our daily interactions with municipal, provincial and federal governments include participating in public consultations, defending cyclists’ interests, proposing regulatory adjustments and giving our opinion on what will encourage or discourage cycling.
Over the years, we have built a diversified, autonomous organization by reinvesting the profits generated by our travel agency and members’ fees into our mission. Despite the headwind caused by the current pandemic, Vélo Québec continued its efforts to convince the government to reopen bike repair shops – and then bicycle stores – as essential services. We created a free handbook, Mesures temporaires pour les cyclistes et les piétons, to help the municipalities set up temporary facilities for cyclists and pedestrians and worked with public authorities to produce pandemic guidelines like the Code de conduite des cyclistes, as well as the Guide du gestionnaire de réseaux cyclables et d’infrastructures de vélo de montagne. We have proposed adventure bike routes to the City of Montréal and intervened publicly to accelerate and defend the implementation of temporary bike paths.
In short, despite the challenges of the past few months – laying off one third of our permanent team, losing 65% of our revenues due to the cancellation of our events – particularly our trips, Vélo Québec has been there for you. And now more than ever, we need the support of our cycling community in order to continue our representation and intervention work. To this end, I am asking you to become a Vélo Québec member and join us in making Québec a model biking environment for cyclists of all ages and levels.
During this difficult time, concerns about the environment, energy transition, sustainable mobility and urban planning remind us of the urgency of coming together to promote biking, as we have done since 1967.
Thank you for your support.
Suzanne Lareau
President and CEO