Talk about a fairytale beginning! It was only two years ago that Montréal frame builder Éliane Trudeau finished a welding course, taught herself frame building, and made her first bicycle frame. PBE24 was her first show, so you can imagine Éliane’s delight and surprise when she heard she’d won the People’s Choice award.
“My general energy is sparky and explosive,” she said “that’s how I wanted this bike to look. It’s a colour scheme for LBGTQ people, and the cycling industry in general,” she told us.
One of the things that attracted Éliane and her partner Ronny Perez to exhibit at the Philly Bike Expo is its reputation for inclusivity. “Bikes have been dominated by the male gender forever, it’s been difficult for somebody like me, a trans woman frame builder, to get in.”
“LBGTQ frame builders around the world need that boost, to see that others like us exist. But also it is good for the general public to see more of us in the industry, to see it’s doable, to see if that is something they want to do. It took me a long while to realize I was trans. Until I saw it on television and other media, saw that representation, I could not realize this about myself.”
With the second and third place-getters in the People’s Choice award also going to female frame builders, it seems fair to suggest that the Women in the Bike Industry forum, organized by Stephen Bilenky back in the 2010 PBE, had something to do with this. “I’m clairvoyant!” he joked when asked about it, far too wise to take any credit. Of much greater impact in recent years has been the Inclusivity Scholarship, initiated by SRAM, which has encouraged frame builders such as Éliane Trudeau to come and exhibit of their own volition. She was not part of the 2024 PBE x SRAM x Industry Nine Inclusivity Scholarships program, and that says a lot about the success of SRAM’s effort, which has recently been co-sponsored by Industry Nine, and for the past couple of years has enjoyed frame building parts support from Paragon Machine Works.
Serpient by Basica Estudio, and Watermelon Daze Dream by Significant Other
Stephen Bilenky may be right, that the Memento Heart bike speaks of the zeitgeist, so let’s do a little dive into the details. Éliane, who still works one day a week as a bike messenger, will use this beauty for one of her favorite activities, bikepacking, and riding local trails too. “Actually it is my first real geared bike. I was a bike messenger in Montreal riding a fixie. All my bikepacking has been of fixed gears. I am still getting used to having gears,” she says.
The frame is a mix of Columbus Cromor, Zona and straight gauge 4130 cro mo tubes.
Wheels are 650B and come from C&L Cycles in Montreal, which is the origin of Bassi Bikes, another PBE24 exhibitor. Cranks are Appleman 2XR, and the seat is a Brooks C17, Éliane’s favourite since bikepacking across Europe in 2019. All PBE24 exhibitors so far, nice one Éliane!
She has fitted a dropper seat post, which is actually pretty wicked for fast road descents as well as dirt. Disc brakes are by Shimano, bars from Salsa, a Zipp stem and Look pedals.
“The choice of parts and accessories comes mainly from the colour scheme. The color combination was curated to fit the trans flag colors, the parts had to compliment the sparkling pink. The 2XR Appleman crankset is partly because of the clean looking aesthetic. I am 6’1″ so actually the 175mm crank arm is my normal length, I did not need the short arms.”
Looking to the custom front rack, the backstop composed of tubes elegantly bent into a heart shape. Custom racks and accessories have been part of the Memento offering from the start. “The heart is to express my love for the LBGTQ community, it feels proper to have that. says Éliane. “I wanted to make this bike memorable and unique, as girly as possible.”
Both Éliane and Ronny worked on making the Heart bike. Ronny bent and mitered tubes, while Éliane did the welding. “We both work together on all our projects,” she says.
Memento was founded when Éliane rode cargo bikes owned by the messenger company she worked for. She fell in love with the bike and decided to get one for herself. Financially it was beyond her means, so she learned welding and taught herself frame building. “I have a background in engineering, but I’d never welded before. After a few hundred hours of practice we were making frames. Ronny and I: we’re both really the self-starter type of person.”
Memento is part of a ripple of frame building starting up across Québec. Keep an eye on this, it could become a wave–like female builders in the custom frames biz.
Photos: Firespire Photography