Full Cycle

Little Alexandra MacQueen was born to ride.

And the two-and-a-half-year-old proves her pedal mettle as she whips around the parking lot of her family's MacQueen's Travel and Bike Shop in Charlottetown.

"Pedal-pedal-pedal," encourages her father, consummate Island cyclist and bike mechanic Danny MacQueen, while her mother, Mirley MacQueen, a former member of the Cuban national cycling team, balances another up-and-coming cyclist, eight-month-old Alicia, on her hip.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of MacQueen's Travel and Bike Shop's pioneering business move into the Cuban market, which was then relatively untouched tourism territory.

That bold move changed the lives of the entire MacQueen family, introducing its members to a whole new culture and way of life. It also resulted in two marriages and two grandchildren who, like the rest of the family, enjoy the best of both worlds.

This Canada-Cuba connection started with the family patriarch, Gordon MacQueen, who had been in the bicycle business in Charlottetown since the 1970s when he and his wife, Leslie MacQueen, moved from the United States to Wood Islands. In the early 1990s, he was looking for a way to keep their children - Kristen, Danny, Kelley and Darryl - working during the winter months.

In 1992, Gordon came up with the idea to pioneer bicycle tours in Cuba in a time when tourism in that country was in its infancy. He'd read an article in The Guardian that indicated that as a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union, Cuba was without a partner and had to find a way of sustaining itself.

"They had no money, they had no fuel. And they had no way of getting their people to work," he says. "At that time, they had only sugar and they traded sugar for a million Chinese bicycles. It was a barter deal."

Gordon's entrepreneurial curiosity was piqued. Cuba's prime riding season coincides with Canada's coldest months, making it was the perfect opportunity for a complimentary winter business.

So he contacted the Canadian embassy in Cuba to see if there was interest in a bicycle tour company.

At the invitation of the Cuban government, he and his teenage son, Danny, Charlottetown lawyer Ron Gilbert and Guardian reporter Nigel Armstrong went to Cuba, where they were squired from one end of the country to the other.

A partnership between the MacQueens and the Cuban government was formed, and MacQueen's Island Tours, the precursor to WoWCuba, was born.

"It was an ideal spot to ride a bike, everyone in Cuba rides a bike, and there were special bike lanes all through Havana designated for bikes only. Hardly any traffic on the road, it was a paradise," says Kristen, who is now based in WoWCuba's Havana office.

"For the people of Cuba who had to ride to work and school, the concept was an anomaly. 'Who wants to ride a bike for fun on their holidays?' It wasn't the Cubans' idea of a fun holiday . . . They thought we were crazy Canadians."

Equipment was essential. So in 1993 Danny, then 20, and his 15-year-old brother, Darryl, boarded a Cuban commercial ship and sailed from a New Brunswick port with their first load of bicycles. However, a hurricane hit midway through their journey to Cuba, turning a five-day trip into a two-week odyssey.

To make matters worse, lard containers in the hold broke loose and started smashing against the stored cars.

"I can remember filming with our little video camera thinking that if we lost everything else we could at least sell the video tape to the news," Danny says with a laugh.

The brothers landed in Havana and with help from their new Cuban representative made it through the maze of importation. Other than the usual tourist words of cerveza and por favor, they were linguistically challenged. Still, within two weeks they managed to get the bicycles and equipment to Santiago 1,000 kilometres away.

"It was really record time considering the next importation took close to six months and we lost more than half of it," Danny says of the vanished equipment.

Initially the Cuba portion of the tour company was a remote property more than 30 kilometres from Santiago. Because there were no cell phones at that time, they set up a radiophone system.

"The things to get started, the basics, you know. Communication is always good," Danny says laughing.

"I think that first season we had 50 people come through, which is not a lot. We've had up to 30 people in one tour (since then).

"A small business always takes a number of years to get off its feet. I think in any business you've got to expect some growth period, but there really was a learning curve in Cuba. I'd say after a few years, the language started to sink in and we started to understand that the policies and the way people do things there isn't the same as back home and you learn to work with them on their principles."

With a travel agent background and a keen head for administration and organization, Kristen arrived to help out with WoWCuba's second season

"The second season I came to Havana and stayed with a Cuban family that didn't speak English. So it was either sign language or sink or swim. And Dad knew we'd swim," she says.

That year, WoWCuba struck publicity gold. A freelancer wrote a full feature for the Globe and Mail, which was published in early December just in time for the upcoming tourist season.

The third year, WoWCuba moved to Havana.

Kristen soon pioneered a Fly and Drive program in Cuba. The company now offers a full program of custom holidays.

"A lot of travellers come to Cuba and aren't necessarily looking for a package tour. They want to explore inside Cuba, they want to drive around, they will have special interests such as fishing and diving," Kristen says.

"There are a lot of niche markets if you take the time to investigate, understand, study and experiment with them."

Kristen was investigating some of these possibilities when she met her husband-to-be, Abel Pez Cespedes of Havana, who is also involved in the travel industry.

They met in November of 2000 and married on Valentine's Day three months later.

The couple is now working toward expanding into new areas.

"Abel and I spent the last year working on different aspects, be it fishing, diving, developing a rental clientele, working on our website to promote different properties for individual stays, car rentals, things that other tour operators aren't offering," says Kristen.

A few years ago Danny was checking out the bicycles at the Velodrome, a track where cyclists race in Havana, when he spied Mirley's unforgettable smile. They crossed paths again a year later.

"I was ready to go for a bike ride (near my home) and we saw each other," Mirley remembers.

"It was like, 'Oh, I remember you.' He came for a bike ride with a friend and me. He came the next day and the day after and that was it."

They married in P.E.I. in 2004.

"It wasn't my first time outside Cuba, but it was a long time away from my mom and my baby sister," Mirley says.

Fortunately, the nature of this Cuba-Canada tour business is that the family spends part of the year here and part of the year there.

"Each year it's different," Danny says.

"We usually head down when it's cold here in October or November. People start going away on their holidays. And then when it gets warm here, Gordon is always anxious to get us back. I really look forward to getting back here in the summer."

In addition to learning the cycling ways of her parents, little Alexandra is now developing her own personal mix of Spanglish - Spanish and English - as she learns her parents' mother tongues.

Every day is a lesson in communication for her aunt Kelley MacQueen.

"She'll say, 'Tia Kelley,' which is Aunt Kelley. 'Quiero watch Dora (the Explorer).' I want to watch Dora the Explorer, which is the Spanish English (storybook character)

She really mixes up her sentences which is good for me because if I really pay attention to her I'll understand a little more Spanish," Kelley says with a grin.

"It's a learning experience."

For Gordon the past 15 years have been a wonderful exploration into new business ventures and a joyous expansion of family.

"It's just enriched all of our lives so much."