Putting wind in the hair of Mississauga Seniors
The concept for bringing Cycling Without Age to Mississauga formed a few years ago through our Streetsville Slow Roll riders visiting retirement residences in the area and interacting with people who longed to relive their days on bicycles. You can read more about the development of the concept and the journey so far on my Cycling Without Age – Mississauga blog which now also contains some of the documentation for the program.
Having been intimately involved with a retirement home in Mississauga with my in-laws and seeing first hand how confined some of the residents were to repetitive events and activities, the idea of providing them an outing which was not by bus or coach and gave them a view rarely seen from a vehicle in their neighbourhood was appealing and possible with a trishaw.
Attempts to garner interest and support in the project waned after COVID took us all by surprise and so the initiative fell off until I was working on a project to see if we could build a detachable cab and use commercial e-bikes to power the modular trishaw. I developed a proposal and sent it out to a cargo bike dealer on the US west coast who approached his manufacturer in China. To his (and my) surprise, they were producing a very similar trishaw which they were marketing under the name Clamber Bikes. He sent me the specs and price and offered even to waive the shipping costs to Seattle if I had the patience to wait until his next container load was coming across the Pacific. I had all the patience and no money so the offer was too good to pass up until it came time to cough up the payment for the vehicle. It was then that I started having doubts about a deal that is too good to be true since Stewart Jensen, who grew up in Victoria, Canada, felt enough of a draw to our project to sell me the trishaw at his cost. It was a win-win situation with only photographs of the plant and online specs to go by.
Around the same time, I decided to try a Facebook fundraiser after creating a Facebook page for Cycling Without Age – Mississauga. We had moderate success with that effort garnering the largest donation of $500 from Kris Hammel, a stalwart supporter of our effort who had encouraged me from the inception of the concept. Several other donations surprised me coming even from the US from actual and virtual friends who believed in the effort. I then set up a Private Facebook Group for friends, pilots and supporters of our project. Please consider joining it for more information pertaining to our chapter of this International Organisation of Cycling Without Age.
On March 6, 2023 we were successful with our registration of Cycling Without Age – Mississauga as a Private Foundation Charity with the Canada Revenue Agency. You can now make tax-deductible donations toward the operations and capital expenses of our program.
Recipient of the 2023 Phil Green award
Awarded by the Mississauga Cycling Advisory Committee annually to a resident of Mississauga who has promoted cycling in the city. Click on heading (for blog post) or image (for photo album) for more details
Phil Green Award in front of plaque of previous winners
Cycling Without Age - Mississauga 