On Tuesday (February 13) Sharon Townsend, executive director of the South Granville Business Improvement Association (SGBIA), emailed me a photo of a bicycle that was found abandoned with a flat rear tire last Thursday (February 8) behind the EQ3 home furnishings store in the 2500 block of Granville Street.

Townsend, who takes a wide-ranging interest of all within her BIA—home furnishing retailers and homeless residents alike, apparently—was wondering if the bike found behind EQ3 was the one stolen from my homeless friend Ivan Saunderson on February 2.

Regular readers will remember how Vancouver Twitter users spontaneously raised over $500 on February 7 so Ivan could buy himself another bicycle (a wonderful secondhand Norco Bigfoot) to replace the stolen one.

The bike found behind EQ3 is a black CCM Prime FS26 hardtail with white front shocks and side-pull brakes. It appears to have been a new product eight years ago. Judging by the photo it’s in good shape, beyond the flat rear tire and an apparently rusty lever on the seat-post quick release.

Someone may belong to it but I showed the photo to Ivan and that someone isn’t him. So far there has been no sign of his stolen bike, beyond a possible sighting, maybe 10 days ago, in a locked parkade in Fairview.

And I really can’t say for certain that this CCM bike was stolen. But it is stereotypical bike thief behaviour to ditch a stolen ride when it gets a flat tire—it being better, seemingly, to put the effort into stealing another bike, rather than fixing the flat.

If this bike belongs to you or to someone you know, it is currently in the possession of the Vancouver Police Department and has the case number: va18-28001.

By the way, you can find out if a stolen or lost bicycle has been recovered by police in Canada by searching for its unique serial number (usually embossed into the underside of the crank) in the Canadian Police Information Centre online database.