Integrating, One Pedal Stroke at a Time

In Saint-Laurent, on a July afternoon, a dozen women newly arrived in Quebec are learning to ride a bike in an elementary school parking lot. Many are immigrants who grew up in Africa, and for most of them, it's a first: for lack of opportunity, they were never able to learn in their country of origin. They're participating in Vélo Québec's Toutes à vélo program, a series of seven sessions where learning takes place among women, guided by facilitators.

Behind learning to ride a bike lies an often-overlooked integration issue: mobility. For these women, knowing how to pedal becomes an affordable and independent way to get to French classes, work, or school. One participant, a legal techniques student who arrived alone in the middle of winter, describes the long bus waits in the cold: the bike represents a newfound freedom for her in a city she's still getting to know.

The sessions are also a space for solidarity. Between balance exercises, the women exchange tips, but also the challenges of rebuilding a life here: the search for a job that matches their qualifications, waiting for a work permit, dwindling savings. The profiles are varied, from a 19-year-old woman to a 72-year-old participant who came to join her daughter, learning French, English, and cycling all at once.

CARI Saint-Laurent is a partner in the program. Leah Blythe, social integration counsellor at CARI, notes that many of these women believe they're the only ones who don't know how to pedal and feel embarrassed about it. It's by coming together as a group that they discover they're not alone and motivate each other. The moment they finally manage to ride, she says, is a real breakthrough.

The need far exceeds the supply: the program, which trained a hundred women when it was created in 2021, was supporting over five hundred two years later, and the waiting list continues to grow. For CARI, this partnership illustrates a simple conviction: integration also happens through concrete actions that break down barriers, one pedal stroke at a time.

Original article: La Presse, "S'intégrer, un coup de pédale à la fois" (August 10, 2024). https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2024-08-10/s-integrer-un-coup-de-pedale-a-la-fois.php