Routine call from Whistler RCMP

I received a routine call from Cpl Mulhall of RCMP - Whistler. They turn over personnel every 2-3 years, so there are no veterans from the original investigation. He had read through Brian's files and called to ask if I had heard anything.

I asked him if he was aware of any patterns of disappearances resembling Brian's, but he didn't know of any. It's not unusual for a hiker to die in the mountains, but most remains are found more quickly.

He wrote to provide his email and contact number ...

... As per our conversation earlier today, I wanted to touch base and provide you with a current contact at the Whistler Detachment. Unfortunately nothing new has surfaced in the missing person investigation. As I said on the phone, accidental deaths in the mountains here are a regrettable and all too frequent event. After reviewing the file it certainly seems like this was likely the case with your brother...

Please feel free to contact me with questions at any time. I can be reached on this email address or on cell at ....

Cpl. Pat MULHALL
Sea To Sky General Investigations

We think of Brian often

There's been no news to report here, but of course his friends and family think of Brian very often.

Recently I received a note from an outdoorsman who heard of his disappearance and tracked the story. He didn't know Brian, but he wrote to say that to this day he thinks about what happened.

I appreciated that note.

It reminded me that people will, on occasion, read this blog. So if you've come to read, thank you.

I should mention that the blog is posted under my pen-name (John Gordon). I'm John Gordon Faughnan, Brian's eldest brother. (Steven is my other brother, Claire is our sister.)

Matt Gunn - met Brian a few days before he disappeared

I wonder sometimes how often people disappear around Whistler BC. Over the past 7 years I've not seen evidence that disappearances are all that common. That's reassuring.

In one look I came across this reference in a web site maintained by Matt Gunn of Vancouver BC. It turns out that Matt spoke with Brian a few days before he disappeared ...

Scrambling Accidents

... Brian Faughnan went missing in the Whistler backcountry in the summer of 2002. An extensive search failed to turn up any evidence about what happened. I met brian a few days before his disappearance while working at MEC and answered some questions he had about good hiking and scrambling destinations. We discussed rainbow mountain, which is where the search team believes he went missing. This story is a real tragedy and reminds me of the inherent danger of hiking alone...

I assume Matt means MEC (mountain expedition coop) in Vancouver. We know Brian bought a technical jacket there.

This is the first new piece of information around Brian's disappearance since 2002. It fits with with everything else -- Brian was expecting to do some hiking and exploring around Whistler and specifically Rainbow mountain.

We don't, of course, know if he ever actually got to the Rainbow mountain. Vancouver had discontinued trailhead registration at that time.

Brian Faughnan entry in North American Missing Persons Network

I'd forgotten I'd done this years ago: Brian Douglas Faughnan. I found it when testing image search using my last name.

A criminal helps out

A phishing attack on families of missing persons alerts me that the brianfaughnan.com domain had lapsed.

Fixed now.

It was six years ago that I returned to St. Paul from the search in Whistler. All my love to Brian's friends, and my thanks to those who helped us.

A successful search shows how hard search is

This is how very hard search can be.

A large group of volunteers spent a week searching for a lost autistic man. He couldn't help his searchers by calling out.

After a week of search the team was about to give up.

'I now believe in miracles,' mother says after autistic son is found

... Two St. Paul firefighters had found Keith Kennedy, severely dehydrated and covered with sores and ticks, lying near a creek in a wooded area roughly a mile west of Trade Lake Camp, said Burnett County Sheriff Dean Roland. The area was being searched for the fourth time when Kennedy was found...

... Kennedy was found by Jim Cotroneo and Gary Ruiz, who were among 16 St. Paul firefighters who joined Sunday's search. They were making one last pass when they spotted Kennedy.

Ruiz said it was nearing 8 p.m. Sunday and his group, part of about 75 firefighters from throughout the Twin Cities area, was about to call it quits. Because so much time had passed since Kennedy's disappearance, they had been treating the operation as a recovery effort rather than a search-and-rescue undertaking, he said.

"We were yelling for the other guys because [the woods were] so thick," he said. "Suddenly we came to a clearing and Jim said, 'He's right here.' I said, 'Who?' and Jim said, 'No, he's right here, the one we're looking for. He's right here.'"

The two looked down to see Kennedy, naked and lying curled in the fetal position. A week's worth of thick stubble darkened his face. Then he moaned. He was alive...

He was found 1 mile from where he disappeared, on the fourth search of the same area. The searchers knew where he'd left from, and had a good idea that he wouldn't move too quickly. It was a very constrained search, and even so it was a hair's breadth from failure.

The article didn't detail Keith's medical state. He went a long time without water. Still, others have survived and we have good reason to hope Keith will too.

Many thanks to those volunteer searchers.

Closing of the McGill Outdoors Club House

The McGill Outdoors (Outing) Club House is up for sale!

If the House could speak, the stories ... well ...

From a forum post:

As many of you know, after 54 years of owning the MOC house in Shawbridge and renting it to us, McGill has decided to sell the house.

They have proposed that the Student Society of McGill University buy it which originally seemed feasible from SSMU's point of view. However, given the McGill's high asking price and the projected repairs necessary, SSMU have decided that they are not in a position to take on the financial liability of buying the house at the current asking price. As such, the house will be put onto the market and McGill will either find a buyer who is willing to pay the exorbitant asking price, or else the market will bring the price down to a level at which SSMU and ourselves will be able to reevaluate.

Shawbridge used to be out in the country, but now it's a commuter exurb. I suspect the House had become something of an awkward legacy.

I imagine Brian's shade might haunt the place.

We'll find a home for the bench we left there during a MOC memorial. I hope his tree will find receptive owners.

Highway of tears - British Columbia

CBC radio featured a story tonight on missing and murdered women. The interview subject claimed hundreds of women have gone missing across Canada, with a particular focus on a
Northern BC road called "The Highway of Tears".

The CBC journalist was clearly steering around sensitive topics. I would guess from the unasked questions that many of the women are thought to have a history of substance problems, and may have been trading sex for drugs or money. There was no estimate on how many have died or been murdered, the "Highway of Tears" story describes 18 presumed murders over the past forty years.

I don't think there's any connection to Brian's disappearance, save to note that, even in wealthy nations, more people disappear than is popularly recognized.

The return of the lost canoeist

I imagine it was a bit of an "emotional" reunion ...

Missing canoeist 'lost his memory for five years' - Times Online

A man who went missing after disappearing on a canoeing trip off Hartlepool in March 2002 has no memory as to what happened and where he had been during the past five years, a police office said today.

John Darwin, a 57-year-old father of two presumed to be dead by his family, walked into the West End Central police station on Saturday and announced: "I think I'm a missing person."

Mr Darwn went missing five and a half years ago after going paddling off Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool. The remains of his red canoe were found washed up on a nearby beach but despite a huge search operation involving five lifeboats and a fixed-wing aircraft no sign of his body was ever found.

His sons, Mark, 31, and Anthony, 29, who both live in the south of England, were called to an "emotional reunion" with their father at the police station off Regent Street.

Today, Inspector Helen Eustace of Cleveland Police told the Hartlepool Mail that she was trying to piece together Mr Darwin's movements but the missing man himself could not fill in the gaps himself.

"We have no account of what's happened in the last five years. He walked into a police station and said 'I think I am a missing person'," she said.

"The guy can't remember anything about what's happened or why he's come forward. He has no memory at all. He has obviously been somewhere for the last five years and a lot of questions need answering."

Ms Eustace said that Mr Darwin had been checked over, was "showing no signs of any illness" and had been free to leave the station.

She added: "It is very infrequent that a case like this happens. It's quite a shock really, more of a shock for the family."

Cleveland Police said that officers hoped to interview Mr Darwin later today to establish his whereabouts of the past five years, after which they could close his missing person file. "We need to speak to him before we close the case, to see whether there are any issues with him of if he needs help," a spokeswoman said. "It's entirely routine...

Entirely routine?

I don't think I'll bring this one up with my mother.

Update: An insurance scam. Not the first!

Images of Rainbow Mountain, and of the 2002 search

A few weeks after our failed search in 2002 I posted some photos of the search for Brian's friends and our family. They're still available on the semi-private site I used to use for photo sharing. Some of the photos are low quality snapshots from an awful camera I used to own, but some are high quality scans of 35 mm slides (thanks Max!).

A few things have changed with photo sharing since 2002, but the biggest change has been the integration of location and images. Images can now be displayed in the context of maps. The process is in its infancy, but it's a big change. My experience with Google's implementation is that it works somewhat unpredictably, but that under certain conditions the images may become publicly associated with image layers in Google Earth and/or Google Map's newish My Maps.

So I've republished the images and associated them with Rainbow Mountain, at times making some rough guesses about where they might belong. Google's satellite images of this region are still quite low resolution, so precision isn't possible anyway.

The first of these links is the most interesting way to view the images in context, but it requires Google Earth. The others work with a browser.

• View in Google Earth (requires Google Earth and a browser)
• Map view (browser)
• Album view (browser)
  

Who knows, perhaps another connection to the NetMind will, someday, aid in the resolution of our personal mystery.

Rainbow Mountain