By Angela Brown

Francophone bike tour visits N.B. school to promote healthy living

May 11, 2018 | 2:00 PM

There was plenty of fun for students at École Père Mercure, Thursday when a cross-country Francophone cycling tour visited students..

Kids took in an interactive presentation by La Grande Traversée during a pancake breakfast to welcome the group.

La Grande Traversée was also kicking off the Saskatchewan-leg of the relay cycling adventure. The entire tour started in Victoria, B.C. on April 29 and wraps up in P.E.I. on June 16. 

“This is not all athletes. This is to promote healthy lifestyle, physical activity,” said Emilie Bureau, general coordinator of La Grande Traversée, a Vancouver- based organization. 

“For most of them, they haven’t ridden in a pack before or on a road-bike before. So it’s an all new thing for them,” she said of the student participants.

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The group of cyclists visiting the school was comprised of 46 students in grades 8 to 12 from B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. They stayed at École Père Mercure overnight after arriving late Wednesday. 

In total this year’s La Grande Traversée event has 275 student participants from across the country, an increase from previous years’ totals of about to 200 roughly.

“It’s a good improvement,” Bureau said. “Our main goal is to have as many active kids as we can in Canada.”

During the tour, participants take turns cycling part of the route across Canada, covering about 100 km per day. They also make presentations at schools along the way. In total the tour will cover more than 2,000 km of cycling to reach its destination.

Bureau said the initiative which was started through the Francophone school board of B.C. and now encompasses Francophone school boards across Canada, has been running since 2013. 

All students taking part in the tour needed to register and train in advance by exercising and following healthy eating habits to prepare.

The coordinator said the organizers hope students seeing the presentation will learn about what’s it’s like to take part in a cycling tour, and might decide to get involved with the project themselves one day.

Bureau added students in the tour also have an opportunity to make new friends along the way.

“They are going to get to mix together, and learn to cycle together and get to know each other,” she said.

École Père Mercure Principal Julie Lemire was thrilled to have the cyclists visit the school, adding it sends a positive message to the young students.

“I hope it will encourage them to get involved in sports such as biking, because that’s something that’s fairly inexpensive that most kids can do,” she said, adding it will also bring awareness to the project. “There are some really interesting events that they can take part in as students in the near future.”

La Grande Traversée founder and general manager Laurent Brisebois and Emilie Bureau received a Meritorious Service Medal of the Governor General of Canada in 2017 to recognize their work with the initiative since it started.

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsNOW