Montreal couple uses bikes to move all their things into their new home

MONTREAL -

Moving season is upon us in Montreal with plenty of people packing up their belongings into boxes and travelling across the city to their new homes.

In an effort to be environmentally responsible, one Pointe-Saint-Charles couple is moving their possessions by bicycle.

It's taken some time, but the move, they say, is going well.

"If there was ever a time to move by bike, we've got the luxury of time," said Mathieu Murphy-Perron. "It's not very far, so let's try it."

The couple doesn’t have any bulky appliances to move, but they do have lots of kitchen supplies and a large keyboard teetering atop a load of boxes strapped to a trailer attached to the back of Murphy-Perron bike.

"We're active people, we like biking,” Jaclyn Turner notes.

The couple insists it's about time all of us rethink the way we do things.

“Montreal might be the most bike-friendly city in North America, [but] we still have a long way to go in terms of normalizing all the things that we can do by cycling,” Murphy-Perron points out. “I've rented a cargo bike for the month, which is what we’ve used for boxes and smaller items and [there] hasn't been a single trip when I'm not stopped by a cyclist, pedestrian or motorist asking about it.”

Their king-size bed proved a challenge to move by bike, so they hired a professional who's been hauling heavy items by bike for 13 years.

“We're landscapers, gardeners, who don't burn any fossil fuels," explains Ian Christopher Goodman with Les Jardiniers à Bicyclette. “We use bicycles and trailers and if you have a couple of those, it's easily equivalent to a pick-up truck.”

Goodman says he doesn’t usually help people move their belongings, but decided to help make this challenge a success to spread the word that people can do almost anything by bike.

“It's surprisingly simple. We have an electric bike, easy, and this trailer makes heavy loads so easy to pull,” Goodman notes.

Gently easing the trailer, full of boxes and the keyboard, off the sidewalk and onto the road, Turner estimates the move has cost them about $500.

“It's been a very mindful way of moving because you pack each box very carefully, only taking two or three boxes at a time,” she said, adding they've done many trips back and forth between the two homes.

As they pedal off through the streets of Pointe-Saint-Charles with their life packed up on their bikes, a team of truck movers stop what they’re doing and yell some words of encouragement: "Bon déménagement! Good going, guys!"

The street is a little bumpy, forcing them to slalom slow and steady around potholes for fear of toppling their gear.

A few kilometres later and the trio arrive successfully at the new address on Sébastopol Street.

“We made it!” yells Goodman as he honks his bike horn.

As the keyboard moves into its new home, a new chapter in this couple’s life begins: no motors, just muscles.