[Closed] Canadian equivalent of Halfords?

[url= http://www.sportchek.ca/home/index.jsp ]sportcheck[/url] not a huge range.

Canadian equivalent of Halfords would probably be Canadian Tire. Wouldn't want to buy a bike from them. If your looking for second hand you could try kijiji or you could try Pink Bike.

Something equivalent to Halfords isn't the first thing I'd normally be looking for 😀

But from what I've experienced in US & Canada, there are a lot of general sports shops which do bikes as part of their stock. Check out outlet places for some possible bargains (may be last year's models).

Vancouver there's loads of cycling, and mountain biking with North Shore (the place) and Whistler not far away so I'd expect some good bike shops about. I've only passed through Vancouver so not seen any myself.

Cheers for those. I'd found Canadian Tire which I guess is the nearest equivalent but looks like they only do one size fits all bikes. Sportchek looks like they have loads of outlets so might end up using them as a last resort.
Anyone have experience of an equivalent version of Wiggle/Chainreaction? I might be able to get a bike delivered to my hotel if there's a reliable company operating.

Dicks is a big sporting store, not sure if they're in Canada though. They'd have the kind of stock that Halfords has probably. Fun place to browse round, usually has a nice gun section for hunting and stuff.

If you want a BSO you could always pick up a $100 bike from Walmart or equivalent 😀

Mountain Equipment Co-op

Also a few bike shops on the same street as the downtown shop (Broadway?)

Well it's only about 2000miles and I've got 4 weeks to do it in so was actually thinking of maybe doing it on the cheapest bike I could find just to make it a bit of a challenge. Sure I'd regret the decision before I even left Canada though

Canadian tire. Otherwise Craigslist!

Why not just take a bike with you? One less thing to worry about and you can just enjoy the trip.

If you want a bike built by an idiot, and generally crap customer service, sure buy something from Crappy Tire (as it's known locally). Cycling is very seasonal here so pretty well all the stores are blowing out their stock cheap at the moment so they are not sitting on 2012 and earlier bikes all winter. If you put in a morning of internetting / phone calls and do a bit of shopping about you should find something potentially half price and brand new.

Craigslist is great if you know what you are doing, but Vancouver is full of bike thieves and crackheads, so if you see something super cheap, it's probably stolen.

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/bia/

Well it's only about 2000 miles and I've got 4 weeks to do it in

have you ever done any touring before? are you camping or credit card touring?

There's a big Mountain CoOperative close to downtown Vancouver. You need to be a member though, costs about CA$10 from memory. Probably not quite Halfords though. The mechanics there, or at least in Toronto, know what they're doing and even phoned round local shops for me when they didn't stock the part I needed!

Couldn't have picked a worse time. Prepare to be wet for days on end.

Thanks for all the info. Obviously I'll aim to go 2nd hand or get a good deal from a proper shop initially but need to know there's a fallback plan in case I can't find anything at those sources. Typically most decent shops will only have one or two bikes in my price range so i might struggle to get one in stock in my size. A halfords type place will at least give me some options.
Don't want to take a bike with me because I'll have to pay to get it on the plane and have the hassle of getting around with it on transfers etc. as I'm stopping off in NY on the way.
I've done some cycle touring before, the way I'm looking at it is it's only really like doing LEJOG twice and I've allowed myself almost 4x the time it would take to do LEJOG.
Haven't really looked at the current weather, is there some sort of bad weather system coming in? I had a look at the average climate and apparently there is measurable rain about 1/5 days.

is there some sort of bad weather system coming in?

Ha, no it's just normal! Vancouver is technically in a rain forest. Last month was pretty awesome though. Might well get better as you go south.

There's about 70 bike shops in the Vancouver area. Some random examples for a google search:

Mountain Equipment Co-op
Different Bikes
Cove
John Henry Bikes
Dizzy Cycles
Bike Doctor
Bicycle Sports Pacific
Obession:Bikes
Steed Cycles
Caps
Denman Cycles

etc etc

Just fire off some emails and save yourself a load of time before you arrive.

Yes, hoping to chase the good weather south.
Found most of the small bike shops on google but none had decent websites. Will probably drop a few emails as you suggest

Canadians don't really 'do' the internet very well, so you'll just have to contact the stores directly.

Canadians don't really 'do' the internet very well, so you'll just have to contact the stores directly.

My vote would be for MEC, personally, for a reasonable tourer. You could even get a belt-drive bike if you fancy something a bit different.

Equivalent of Halfords is Canadian Tire, but its bikes are firmly aimed at those who don't care about bikes. Best advice is as above, try MEC for the best value decent gear, all the details are on their website. Availability may be limited, but phone ahead and they'll probably check for you.

[url= http://www.mec.ca/AST/ShopMEC/Cycling.jsp ]http://www.mec.ca/AST/ShopMEC/Cycling.jsp[/url]

Otherwise, lots of local bikes shops. As mentioned above, none of them have a good web presence, you'll have to call around.

The last month has been freakishy good weather... it broke on Friday, its been belting it down for the last 48hrs! Welcome to winter.