Dressed in pink, six-year-old Rowan Burnett jumps on her red mountain bike with pink Barbie bell and rides away. She has a huge, toothless grin on her face, thanks to the annual Bike Rodeo day at Mamquam Elementary School last Thursday.
Many of the school’s 293 students in Kindergarten to Grade 6 brought bicycles and donned helmets to ride an obstacle course, have their bikes checked, learn about intersections and name their bikes.
The event was held at every Squamish elementary school and led by Squamish Rotary Club volunteers.
“Bike day is my favourite day,” said Burnett, a Grade 1 student.
She said she doesn’t often get to ride her bike to school. “I live up a hill and it is really steep,” she explained.
The bike rodeo also fits with what the Hub for Active School Travel (HASTe) program aims to do: get more students to walk or cycle to school instead of being driven, said the program’s Squamish coordinator, Keely Kidner, who was on hand to help with the event.
“Start that behaviour change and get kids excited about cycling to school,” Kidner said. “Usually in the end of May, beginning of June, it is going to be beautiful weather, a lot of fun… smelling flowers and feeling the wind and that sort of thing that you don’t get when you are in a car.”
Jagtaran Basraon, 8, is one of the students Kidner doesn’t have to convince to ride to school. He already does.
“It is fun,” he said. “And I race my bike.”
Teacher Shuna McClements, who organizes the Bike Rodeo, said she supports anything that gets students outside and moving.
“I love doing this because I just get such a thrill seeing the kids in the outdoors riding their bikes and exercising and being fit,” she said. “We are trying to promote healthy living in Squamish, and we are trying to make kids see the value of exercise.”
McClements said over the eight years she has been organizing the event, she has seen fewer and fewer students riding to school, “because of the ‘stranger danger’ threat people perceive that isn’t there and also because parents are so busy that it is just easier if they just drive them to school.”
Bike to School and Work Week is May 30 to June 5 this year. To sign up to participate, visit the biketowork.ca website.
