How a Saturday morning bike ride is Nanaimo’s version of a global celebration
On Saturday, October 24, Nanaimo is celebrating Global Donut Days on two wheels. This casual, no-drop morning ride is our local take on a worldwide celebration of Doughnut Economics, a framework Nanaimo was the first municipality in North America to adopt. Over about 16 km, riders will visit some of the places putting those ideas into action, with the ride fueled by donuts and coffee.
WHO: Open to the community. All bikes and riding levels welcome, with a no-drop pace.
WHAT: Global Donut Days, on Two Wheels, is a casual 16km community bike ride marking Nanaimo’s local celebration of Global Donut Days.
WHEN: Saturday, October 24, 2026, 10:00 a.m.
WHERE: Location will soon be announced!
REGISTER: Click here
What Are Global Donut Days?
Global Donut Days is an international festival run by the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), the organization built around Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics model. Since it started as a single day of coordinated local action in 2023, it has grown into a multi-day event held online and in person in cities around the world, each one exploring what putting Doughnut Economics into practice actually looks like on the ground. In 2026, the festival runs October 20 to 24, and Nanaimo’s ride falls on its final day.
Where Nanaimo fits into that story
Nanaimo’s relationship with Doughnut Economics goes back further than this ride. In December 2020, City Council voted to adopt the Doughnut Economic Model as the organizing framework for all city planning, a move that made Nanaimo the first municipality in North America to do so.
The model is now built into City Plan: Nanaimo ReImagined, the city’s Integrated Action Plan and its Monitoring Strategy, the documents that guide how the city tracks its own progress on everything from housing to climate to local economic health.
Rather than talk through what Doughnut Economics looks like in Nanaimo, the ride goes and looks at it directly, tracing roughly 16 km and two hours through some of the places already doing that work: community food, active transportation, food security, public space, recreation, local enterprise and some genuinely good infrastructure nerding.
The Route
Starting at 10:00 a.m., the ride makes three featured stops:
- Beaufort Park Food Forest, a look at community food, neighbourhood stewardship and shared public space in practice.
- Boxwood Interchange, a surprisingly good spot to talk about active transportation, land use and what more people-focused civil engineering can look like.
- Tom Harris Regional Food Centre, a major piece of regional food security infrastructure that connects surplus food with people and communities across Vancouver Island.
From there, the group rides back through Bowen Park and the Old City, crosses the Bastion Bridge into downtown, stops for a doughnut at Milk Jam Donuts, and finishes with everyone hanging out together in Diana Krall Plaza.
Who It’s For
The ride is deliberately casual and no-drop, where we bike as a group. E-bikes, commuters, fixies, ATBs, 90s resto-mods, rat bikes, basket bikes, classic steel: whatever you ride, bring it.
Taking Part Online
Global Donut Days runs October 20 to 24, 2026, online and in person around the world, so anyone who can’t make the ride can still join in. The festival’s online programme, hosted at doughnuteconomics.org/gdd2026, features free talks and workshops from organizers worldwide on this year’s themes: cities and land use, food systems, decision-making, ancestral economies and Indigenous voices, and art and imagination.
