One man can't believe the effort — and audacity — to which someone went to steal his bike.

Sometime overnight from March 16 to 17, Jacques Marcoux's $1,600 bicycle was taken from in front of Winnipeg's St. Boniface Hospital, where his girlfriend was giving birth to their baby.

It wasn't just that the bike was stolen — but how.

The bike thief went through great effort to cut through Jacques Marcoux's bike lock. (Jacques Marcoux)

The thief plugged an electric grinder into an outside outlet for the hospital, then fired it up, cutting through the tempered steel u-lock.

When Marcoux went to get the bike, which was in front of the hospital entrance, the cut lock and extension cord were all that was left.

"They would have scouted it. They would have known there was an outlet there," he said.

"They had enough extension cord to run it across the entire lawn … like a 20-metre, at least, extension cord."

Marcoux says it would have taken someone several minutes to grind through the lock, and there would have been sparks flying.

It wouldn't have been the most clandestine robbery and Marcoux is amazed no one saw anything.

"The set-up, the noise, the grinding, the kind of the angle they would have had to have been working at because there were other bikes on the rack. I'm guessing at least two minutes worth of grinding," he said.

He's offering a $150 reward for his bike's return.

Marcoux says he wants to remember the day for the birth of his daughter, not for the theft of his bike.