Nepean 'Bike Guy' Fixes Broken Cycles, Gives Them Away Free
Grant Gilliland has turned his Bel Air Park driveway into a bicycle repair workshop—and he's not selling anything.
Drive past Grant Gilliland's driveway in Ottawa's Bel Air Park neighbourhood and you'll see something unusual: dozens of bicycles lined up, all in various states of repair. For newcomers like Daniel Addai Fobi, who arrived from Ghana, the sight was bewildering. "I couldn't count them, there were so many," he said.
Gilliland has become something of a neighborhood institution, quietly fixing up cast-off bikes—many of them salvaged from trash heaps, curbs, and donation centers—and giving them away to anyone who needs one. He's not running a business. There's no price list, no storefront, no social media campaign. He just fixes bikes and hands them over.
The operation speaks to a particular kind of urban generosity. Bikes that might otherwise end up in landfills get a second life. People without transportation suddenly have mobility. And a driveway gets transformed into a public workshop where neighbors stop by, chat, and see what's possible when someone decides to solve a problem rather than ignore it.
For a city increasingly interested in cycling infrastructure and sustainable transportation, Gilliland's model—informal, generous, embedded in a neighborhood—represents something cities can't legislate: the texture of community that makes a place actually work. One driveway at a time.