Ask around most family biking circles in Vancouver who they should talk to for advice on riding with kids, and you’ll almost certainly be pointed in the direction of Lisa Corriveau, also known as Spokesmama. A fervent advocate in Metro Vancouver, Corriveau has built a name for herself as the person “in the know” when it comes to all things family cycling, but like most local “bike celebrities”, her entry into activism was not a clear path from the start.

With an educational background in Visual and Language Arts, Corriveau has enjoyed a career as a freelance writer since 2010, when she first started her blog The Sprog (named after the nickname for her then-unborn first child), and has since contributed to several organizations and publications. She used her blog as a platform to share stories of her life as a mom in Vancouver, including cycling, DIY projects, sustainable living, and how she made life without car ownership work for her family.

Her content was so popular it garnered her a top 30 spot on VancouverMom.ca’s annual list of top mom bloggers. Getting to network with other women who were using a blog format to share their stories, Corriveau began to think about rebranding – turns out ‘Sprog’ was a British colloquialism unfamiliar to most in of her audience. From there, the Spokesmama was born. “That was when I really decided to focus on cycling and car-sharing, and the idea of living car-free as the focus for the blog.”

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