Guelph, Ont. charitable bike repairs halted due to bylaw complaint

After 14 years of repairing and selling bicycles out of the garage of her home, a Guelph, Ont. woman’s efforts have ended – for now, at least.

It’s a broken bike bonanza inside Mary Rife’s garage, but there’s nothing the 70-year-old woman can’t fix.

“I can be a senior and sit and watch TV all day, but that’s not who I am,” she said.

Any funds she raises are for a good cause.

“The money goes to the Stephen Lewis Foundation. It provides for people in Africa with HIV/AIDS,” said Rife.

She’s been doing this for 14 years, with 296 bicycles sold in 2024.

“We’ve raised over $25,000 this year alone,” said Rife.

But a complaint made to the city’s bylaw department is putting the brakes on her efforts.

“They gave me about three weeks to shut down. They said, ‘OK, by October 19th, if you haven’t shut down, you could be fined,’” she said.

After all these years of fixing bikes, Rife says this is the first time she’s received any sort of complaint.

She says she was told by a bylaw inspector she can’t have a home occupation in her garage, she can’t display the bikes on her lawn and she also can’t have a sign indicating she’s selling the bikes.

“I normally stick [the sign] on the road, but yeah, it’s against the law I guess,” she said.

All of it, Rife says, doesn’t make much sense.

“I’m definitely not going to do this in my kitchen,” said Rife.

In an email to CTV News Kitchener, the city’s chief building official says their records show another complaint was actually filed in 2021.

But they acknowledge Rife does plan to challenge this instance.

“The owner has recently applied to the Committee of Adjustment for a variance and the City of working with her through that process,” an email from Jeremy Laur reads in part.

Rife says the bylaw inspector who came by her home was very kind and reasonable.

“He was such a nice guy and he was the one that actually said, ‘You know what? This is such a good thing. Why don’t you apply for a variance?’” she explained.

She will get a chance to prove her case at a hearing in November.

But the application is costing her $1,900. It’s an amount she says is well worth it if it means getting back to fixing broken bikes and her broken heart.