Stolen bike helps woman cycling across Canada fall in love with Winnipeg

A Toronto woman cycling across Canada who had her $3,500 bike stolen in Winnipeg says she is overwhelmed by the support she's received, includingan offer to replace it.

Bobby Aucoin is trekking across Canada to "have a conversation with Canadians" about environmental issues.

She started her trip on June 25 in Ottawa, and arrived in Winnipeg on July 12.

She was planning to head out to Dauphin for the next leg of her trip early Saturday morning, but woke up to find her Cervelo P3 triathlon bike was gone from the third-storey balcony of the apartment she was staying in.

"I was kind of in disbelief. My brain wanted to think of every possibility besides the reality that it was stolen," she said.

Aucoin is not the only cross-Canada cyclist to have her bike stolen in Winnipeg this month.

On Canada Day, an Estonian man on an around-the-world bicycle trip had his bike stolen by thieves who broke into the St. Boniface garage where he had stored it.

Aucoin said she didn't lock her bike upbecause the balcony was essentially an extension of her host's apartment.

'The right thing to do'

After filing a report with the police, she started posting about the incident on social media and her website.

Soon she was flooded with messages of support and offers from people to lend her a bike, she said.

One of the people who contacted her was David Ossip, the CEO of payroll company Ceridian.

Ossip said he decided to see whether his company's Winnipeg office could procure a bike for Aucoin because he's an avid cyclist himself and can appreciate how difficult her journey must be.

"If you look at what she's doing, as one person with one bike on a tour across Canada of 4,000 kilometres, that is quite a challenging feat," he said.

"It just seemed like the right thing to do."

While she was frustrated at first, Aucoin said she has since "fallen in love" with the people of Winnipeg.

She feels sorry for whoever did take her bike, because they must have been in a bad situation.

"I can't imagine what kind of desperate situation a person would be in that would force them to climb up to the third-storey balcony of an apartment building and steal a bike."

On Monday morning, Aucoinwas waiting to receive her bike so she could continue her journey across Canada.

She plans to head north towardSaskatoon and follow the path of the Trans Mountain pipeline.