The idea is to get old bikes moving again, whether that means patching a flat tire or replacing a rusted chain.

So, with an arsenal of tools, spare parts, and summer students, staff from the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) head out with the Pop-Up Bike Hub initiative — in place since 2020 — setting up shop throughout Nova Scotia offering free bike tune-ups.

In 2015, Halifax’s EAC introduced the first iteration of the more recent program, with Welcoming Wheels, which takes donated bikes, refurbishes them, and gifts them to new Canadians. The group was finding that the bikes it distributed would get donated back when something broke, with a few even abandoned around town for lack of bike repair knowledge or access to repair services. It became clear that communities in HRM — in fact in communities across the province — needed more than bikes. They needed someone to fix them, and the Hub was born.

“There are communities who lack the cycling infrastructure to get to a bike shop, especially if a broken bike is their only way to get there,” says Matt Bawtinheimer, Hub coordinator with the EAC. “There are also just communities who are underserved and marginalized, so there are socioeconomic barriers as well as proximity barriers to getting a bike fixed.”

The group chooses their pop-up locations accordingly, focusing on communities where cycling has the most potential, and where repair services are most lacking. For two or three days a year they bring everything a marooned cyclist could wish for, charging nothing for parts, labour, or the use of specialized tools. This year, they’ve partnered with the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq to visit eight First Nation communities in mainland Nova Scotia. After that, they’re heading to Cape Breton and the more rural areas of HRM.

Bawtinheimer, who’s been fixing bikes in one capacity or another for eight years now, says his work with the Hub covers everything from popped tubes, bald tires, and exhausted chains, to rusted gears, and brake pads worn down to nothing. All of these are surmountable, he says, as long as the frame’s intact. The Hub, he adds, often gets busy — not just with repairs, but with kids racing around on newly fixed bikes. In some cases, it’s their first ride in months, and probably their safest, since Bawtinheimer also hands out lights, bells, and helmets.

“We’ve heard stories in these communities of kids who’ve had to brake using their shoes because the brakes on their bikes are worn out,” he says.

There’s no such thing as a free helmet, and the Pop-Up Bike Hub does, indeed, rely on funding. Its partners include the Province of Nova Scotia, the Halifax Regional Municipality, the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, and the Halifax Climate Investment, Innovation and Impact Fund (HCi3). Some of this has become multi-year funding, enough to keep the pop-up going at least through the summer of 2027.

Bawtinheimer expects they’ll outlive that timeline, if for no other reason than because they’re so popular, but eventually, the goal, he adds, is to put themselves out of business. Because they aren’t just sharing parts and tools with the communities hosting them, they’re also sharing knowledge — instructing participants in the finer points of bicycle maintenance and repair, so they can keep their own bikes rolling, and perhaps those of their neighbours. If anyone’s keen to carry the torch in a given community, Bawtinheimer says the plan is to arrange specific bike repair workshops over the winter, equipping community groups with tools and training, so flat tires won’t need to wait for the Hub to come back.

“In the last four years, we’re up to 1,700 bikes that we’ve fixed,” he says. “And we’ve started building on that number this season. We’re also making sure that if people want to learn, there’s a space for them to do that.”

For information on dates and locations, contact the EAC: transportation@ecologyaction.ca.

The Climate Story Network is an initiative of Climate Focus, a non-profit organization dedicated to covering stories about community-driven climate solutions.