Saskatoon Cycles May 2025 Newsletter
This newsletter issue is BIG! Read on for info on:
- Spring BYXE Week 2025
- Bike Valet
- Ride for Your Life 2025
- Velo Canada Bikes’ Pedal Poll 2025
- Life Outside Gear Exchange’s 1st Annual Big FUN Bike Ride
- Big Pelican Ride
- The Center for Cycling Education online course
- SafeConnect Cycle Route – Dundonald to Campus
- more!
BYXE Week – Spring 2025
The 2025 BYXE Weeks concluded on May 18, 2025 after an energetic and busy Spring event. Over the course of the nine days of cycling activities, the city had:
- a record number of participants (and tasks fulfilled) in the Scavenger Hunt
- almost 1000 store visits for the 3rd Annual Great Saskatoon Bike Passport Adventure
- 19 stations and over 1200 visits on Bike to Work Day
- around 50 bikes serviced for free at the Tune-Up Tent
- hundreds of photos and social media posts shared
- over 2000 prize entries generated!
Saskatoon’s community spirit comes alive in a palpable way during BYXE Week. Businesses commit space, treats, and human resources to host Bike to Work Day commuter stations. Volunteers donate time and energy to support activities. And PEOPLE GET ON THEIR BIKES AND EXPLORE. They visit with strangers (or friends they haven’t gotten to know yet). They post amazing and creative photos. They find places they’ve never been before. They try biking to work. And at least one had his bike stolen while collecting Passport stickers and stoically vowed to continue (if he’s reading this, contact us!).
BYXE Week is a great reminder of how vibrant cycling already is in the city, and how much better things can be when we collectively share experiences. It also is an opportunity for people to learn more about getting around in their city, where infrastructure gaps are, ways around them, and where some locations just scream out for improvement.
We hope that everyone who participated in BYXE Week found it rewarding, even if they didn’t win a prize. We certainly enjoyed seeing so many new faces and hearing so many new stories. This newsletter would be impossibly long if we included even a fraction of them, so in the spirit of a picture being worth a thousand words, we offer some photos.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to BYXE Weeks 2025. We hope you carry this energy with you for the rest of the year, and we’re already looking forward to a successful BYXE 2026!
Bike Valet is a GO!
The 2025 season of the Saskatoon Cycles Bike Valet is officially underway!
We got off to an auspicious start on Sunday, May 4th at the Kaleidoscope Art Festival at Buena Vista Park, taking in over 80 bikes!! This was far more than we expected, but easily manageable with our enthusiastic volunteers and a well established system.
Still, if the success of Kaleidoscope is indicative of the year ahead, it’s going to be a busy year for valets! We’ll need lots of fun-loving and caring volunteers who like spending time outside with other fun-loving people.
Join us! Shifts are a breezy two hours, and you’ll get to see a LOT of smiles from appreciative cyclists. You’ll always have a team working with you, and if it’s your first time volunteering, you’ll get a slick new T-shirt to show off your involvement!
CHECK OUT THE AVAILABLE BIKE VALET SHIFTS HERE!
If you have any questions about the Bike Valet, please contact us here.
Ride for Your Life 2025 – June 15
Hundreds of cyclists and dozens of people walking turned out for last year’s first ever Ride for Your Life rally in Saskatoon. Organized by Tod Fox in memory of his wife Natasha, the event was described as “a rally for change and remembrance”, and aimed to raise awareness around the need for pedestrian and cyclist safety and infrastructure.
Saskatoon Cycles has been handed the organizing reins and we’re hoping to retain the spirit and resolve of the rally to make it bigger each and every year; a massive display of engaged citizens is a sight to behold, and is noticed by politicians and city administrators.
REGISTER HERE FOR RIDE FOR YOUR LIFE 2025
We hope you’ll join the rally this year. In addition to the big ride, we’ll have in attendance:
- Speeches
- The Saskatchewan Prevention Institute, with a focus on bike safety skills for youth
- The Saskatoon Cycles Tune-Up Tent for all of your minor bike adjustments and tweaks
- Ride for Your Life 2025 T-shirts for sale
Registration is not required, but it does give us an idea of how many people are coming. It also is your chance to pre-order a T-shirt to ensure you get the size you want!
REGISTER HERE FOR RIDE FOR YOUR LIFE 2025
Pedal Poll 2025 – June 3 – 8, 2025
The Velo Canada Bikes Pedal Poll for 2025 is fast approaching!
From their website:
The count is a chance to evaluate the state of cycling in our communities. Together we get a “snapshot” of what cycling looks like in communities across Canada, at the same time, year over year.
The data collected helps build the case for more, and better, cycling infrastructure. This growing data set is there for everyone to use to advocate for access to safe cycling choices for everyone, everywhere.
Saskatoon has been participating in the Pedal Poll since 2021, and we want to make sure the prairies are represented in the national numbers!
GRAB A SHIFT FOR THE SASKATOON PEDAL POLL HERE!
Big Fun Bike Ride – June 8, 2025
Life Outside Gear Exchange (a valued Friend of Cycling) invites Saskatoon bike riders to a new event this year, the Big Fun Bike Ride on Sunday, June 8th, 2025!
From the registration page:
Join us for the first annual Saskatoon’s Big FUN Bike Ride – a community ride celebrating the joy of cycling, being outside, and community! Whether you’re looking for a leisurely loop or a longer ride, this event is for you.
The event will offer two different distances for riders to choose from, 6 stations to represent Treaty 6 Territory to stop to gather markers, a BBQ picnic, a cool bag of swag, and other prizes.
Saskatoon Cycles will be on site to provide our legendary Bike Valet where you can park your bike worry-free AND the Tune-up Tent for any minor adjustments and fixes!
And if it wasn’t already enough of a feel-good event, a portion of profits will be donated to Meewasin Trail to help maintain and improve our city’s beautiful cycling routes!
There is still space for a few more participants, so sign up today!
REGISTER FOR THE 1ST ANNUAL SASKATOON’S BIG FUN BIKE RIDE HERE
Big Pelican Ride – June 21, 2025
“The Big Pelican” is an annual community ride organized by local photographer Nathan Jones and hosted at Redberry Lake, offering routes of 24, 40, and 85 km through the rolling Thickwood Hills. This non-competitive event hopes to offer something for riders of all ambitions, building community and developing the area as a gravel cycling hot-spot. Farm stops on the 40 & 85 km routes will offer snacks and refreshments, and a pancake breakfast will be hosted the following day to reward those who stick around to camp. More information and registration at bigpelican.ca or follow along on instagram at @thebigpelican.
The ride is rapidly approaching its maximum registration, so if this is your kind of adventure get your name in soon!
Visit the website or contact Nathan for more details.
The Center for Cycling Education Collaboration!
Whether you’re a rider with many years of experience, or someone planning to head out for the first time into traffic (or onto the Meewasin Trail), there is much to learn.
The Center for Cycling Education (The CCE) has a ‘Traffic Smarts for Cyclists’ online course that will add significantly to your tool kit, increasing your competence and comfort through innovative, effective, and enjoyable training.
Topics include:
- Choosing & configuring your equipment
- An explanation of the laws (and your rights)
- Choosing your place on the road
- Proper approaches to intersections (and how to trigger a traffic light)
- And so much more.
(Here are some testimonials.)
Saskatoon Cycles has partnered with The CCE and we’ve arranged for a $10 discount for you.
More details on the course can be found here: saskatooncycles.org/traffic-smarts-for-cyclists/
Working with cycling instructors in both Canada and the United States, The CCE creates programs that exceed nationally recognized standards.
New: SafeConnect Cycle Route
Our board member Dominic has posted the second SafeConnect Cycle Route in our series, this one helping riders navigate from the Dundonald neighborhood to the U of S Campus.
We’re laying out maps of tested cycling routes that link various neighborhoods in the city and then taking video to show how manageable even longer trips can be. Our routes will seek lower traffic areas, shared-use paths, shortcuts, and tips to make your ride safer and as efficient as possible.
Check it out on our YouTube page. Like and subscribe to get notifications of new videos!
Cycling Data
We still run into quite a few people who haven’t heard about some rather “passive” actions they can take to help city planners and advocates get the robust data they need to inform their approach to better and safer cycling in Saskatoon.
Strava and BikeMaps.org are apps that aggregate crowdsourced information to help decision-makers understand transportation habits and patterns. The information collected is all anonymous, but extremely useful when accumulated and sorted on a city-wide scale. To help out, you can:
1. Install Strava on your phone and track every ride or walk you take. You only need a free account. And if you already use a tracking app, check to see if it has a Strava integration. There are more than 100 apps that Strava connects with.
Strava anonymizes the data from all users in an area and creates the Strava heatmap. Images from these heatmaps can be a powerful visual to show that there are cyclists and walkers using the streets all over Saskatoon (like this presentation on Circle Drive on Ave C). But we need as many cyclists as possible to be using this system!
2. Bookmark Bikemaps.org and report every time you have a cycling crash, a near-miss, see a cycling hazard, or have your bike stolen. (This is NOT meant to replace the calling of an ambulance or the police. Absolutely, do that first if it’s needed!!)
Bikemaps.org is a system that aims to catch as many as possible the almost 70% of all cycling incidents or near misses that don’t get reported officially.
Donate!
Your donations give us the resources to press toward a Saskatoon where cycling is a viable, year-round mode of transportation that is safe, convenient, and comfortable for all ages.
We want families to be able to simply hop on their bikes to go grab an ice cream and enjoy the beauty of Saskatoon. For you or your partner to pick up groceries or a library book. And we really want you to be able to commute to work and back safely and conveniently.
Your donation helps us work on these three ‘pillars’ of cycling development for Saskatoon:
- Infrastructure – A safe, convenient, comfortable, and well-maintained cycling network throughout the city that allows cyclists to go from every neighbourhood to key destinations.
- Ridership – Educate, encourage, and promote cycling so more people choose bicycles as a convenient and safe transportation option year round.
- Culture – Educate, encourage, and promote diversity in ridership with respectful inclusion of all modes of transportation.