A broken bike abandoned at the Brady Road Landfill may look like a piece of junk, but it could make a big difference in at least one person’s life.

Sheryl Reid-Corrales, Headingley Correctional Centre’s Winding River Community unit manager, said that bike could become one of the 2,000 bikes repaired by inmates and donated to The WRENCH (Winnipeg Repair Education and Cycling Hub) to distribute to community groups serving immigrant and other Winnipeg residents in need.

“We go and get the bikes from the Brady Road Landfill,” Reid-Corrales said.

By repairing bikes, inmates learn valuable job skills as part of an addiction program offered at the special unit, which houses up to 150 men.

Winding River is based on the model of Guthrie House Therapeutic Centre at Nanaimo Correctional Centre in British Columbia, she said. It is a self-contained unit that offers counselling and behavioural modelling to keep inmates fighting addictions out of the main prison system.

“We’re an addiction program with a positive environment,” Reid-Corrales said.

Two correctional officers oversee the bike shop, teaching inmates to repair bikes. Reid-Corrales said 16 inmates at a time work for a half-day, and the other part of their day is devoted to counselling and programs supporting their desire to kick an addiction to alcohol and/or drugs.

“It takes a year for them to go through the program,” she said. “Working in the bike shop is a practice run for when they get out (of prison). In the bike shop, they are treated like an employee.”

This puts the onus on inmates to show up on time and call in if they are sick and unable to come to work.

Reid-Corrales said giving inmates personal responsibility for their success or failure in the bike shop and Winding River program is important.