Cove Bike Shop Ltd

Chaz Romalis and his friends started importing bikes from the States when he was 18, augmenting them by bending the frames and adding more gears, then taking them out in to the hills of North Vancouver. In 1981, Chaz took this one step further when he started Canada’s first mountain bike shop in Deep Cove.

From its origins in a corner gas station in Deep Cove, the business has expanded, adopted other styles of bikes and moved to its North Vancouver location. “Chaz and his friends would bring up cruiser bikes (now fondly remembered as clunkers), and morph them into what we know more as mountain bikes,” says Sascha Tomchenko, current manager of Cove Bikes. They recognized that the riding conditions around the Lower Mainland required a distinct frame geometry for better handling, and were taking things into their own hands to create what they needed.

“All the traditional mountain bikes made by American companies had short top-tubes and long stems and that wasn’t good for our conditions. So they made the first bike that had the long top-tube and short stem just to be able to handle the more rugged terrain that the North Shore has become famous for,” says Sascha, who’s been working at the shop since 2007.