She’s a sturdy bike, built to carry heavy panniers and a passenger through the Rockies, across the plains and over the roughest terrain of the Canadian Shield.

“I didn’t want anything delicate,” Mark Smith says of Gracie, the bicycle he rode thousands of kilometres across Canada from April to July. “Anything that happened on the road, I needed to fix.”

But in spite of the fact that she wasn’t a glamorous model, Gracie caught the eye of Toronto thieves, who made off with her in the darkness on Saturday night.

Smith had been out having a drink with friends at the Black Irish pub on Queen St. E. and Sherbourne St. He came out just before midnight, expecting to cycle home to his Corktown condo, only to find that his trusty ride was gone. The $1,500 black Surly bicycle Smith bought from Bikes on Wheels earlier this year couldn’t withstand the metal-cutting tools of thieves.

Smith was shocked. “It’s not the first bike I’ve had stolen, but it was the one I was most attached to,” he says.

He immediately posted the news on his Facebook page with the words: “Gracie’s gone.” He ended the message with, “She was a great bike, and worth remembering.”

Smith grew attached to Gracie during his personal mission to cross the country by bicycle. “I was embarrassed about how little of my country I’d seen,” says Smith, 37. “I wanted to say I’d seen it coast to coast.”

And so he did. His mission to see more of Canada and spend time in quiet reflection resulted in an almost 8,000-kilometre trip, a loss of 19 pounds, the growth of a Duck Dynasty-worthy beard and a full bank of memories and photos he posted on his blog along the way.

Gracie is in many of the shots, dipping into the Atlantic Ocean at St. John’s, Newfoundland and again at the Pacific Ocean in Stanley Park, British Columbia. There she is at the side of the road, leaning against a giant red chair, or stopping by a humorous road sign.

“She never complained, which is something I can’t say for myself,” says Smith, who called the bike his “friend” in his postings. The provincial government worker is in the midst of taking a year off to work on his art and a graphic novel, as well as make the trip of a lifetime.

The first leg of his trip involved riding east from Toronto to St. John’s. After a week’s rest, he flew to Vancouver and rode back to Toronto. Going east in April was too early, he says, “It snowed every day.”

However, easterners were by far the friendliest people, he says.

“It was absurd, everyone I passed asked me what I was doing and did I have a place to stay?”

Although he hobbled around with sore ankles after a day of riding on the eastern leg of the trip, the aches and pains soon disappeared and he handled the 100-kilometre ride a day well physically.

What astonished him was the emptiness of his country.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“I underestimated how much ‘nothing’ there is in Canada. I was rarely interrupted by civilization. There were big long stretches of open wilderness.”

In New Brunswick he left the Trans-Canada Highway for what he thought would be a more scenic route only to travel more than 100 kilometres without passing even an intersection. The owners of a closed motel kindly gave him accommodation for the night — the next town was still 70 kilometres away.

Smith has reported the theft to police and is scouring Craigslist and Kijiji to see if Gracie pops up for sale. Because he has the key for Gracie’s anti-theft wheels, the thieves will be unable to unlock them, says Smith. The way he locked his bike to the rack involved both the frame and wheel meaning the thieves probably had to damage it during the theft.

“It seems like a waste,” says Smith, who is hoping to be reunited with Gracie, but admits it’s a long shot.