That is just one of many questions the police and others have been puzzling over since the arrest last month of Igor Kenk, the owner of a used-bike shop here.

Kenk's legacy now fills a former police garage with a leaky roof. Organised by brand name and mostly resting on their handlebars, wheels pointed upward, are 2,396 of the bicycles that police say Kenk either stole or arranged to have stolen.

The jumbled collection of bicycles suggests that Kenk is the unofficial world champion of bicycle thieves, said a New York Times report.

But as he awaits trial next month on 58 charges related to theft and drug possession, the biggest mysteries of all are Kenk's motives and his ultimate plan for the armada of steel, rubber and aluminum he amassed.

'He's easily the most hated man in Toronto,' said Alex Jansen, a filmmaker who has been working on a documentary about Kenk for more than a year as part of a study of his rundown neighborhood's transition to hipsterdom. 'But I just found that it's not as black and white as I originally thought.'

NYT said the arrest has provoked an outpouring of anger and publicity in a city renowned as one of the most bicycle-friendly places in the world.

About 15,000 hopeful cyclists, some teary-eyed, have scoured the Kenk collection in search of their missing bicycles. But only 469 bicycles had been returned as of last Thursday morning, when 17 more days of public viewings began.

The public reaction 'was staggering,' said Ruth White, the superintendent of 14 Division, the police unit that made the arrest.

'I've never seen anything like it in 30 years.'

Oddly enough, the police and many bicyclists were aware that Kenk's little shop, the Bicycle Clinic, appeared to be a black hole that consumed stolen bicycles. Bike theft victims regularly discovered their missing bicycles there, and were often able to recover them, either through vigorous argument or a payment of US$30(S$42.70) or US$40.