Vienneau, Nicole March 31 2007, Damascus

[PorchlightEast]

Family searches Syria for missing Vancouver woman
May, 20 2007 - 10:40 AM


VANCOUVER - The brother of a Canadian woman missing in Syria is coming home empty-handed.
It has been seven weeks since Nicole Vienneau set out on a day trip near Damascus and vanished.
Vienneau's brother Matt and friend Gary went back to her hotel and retraced her steps hoping to find some clues as to what happened to her.
On a website looking for information, the two say they found nothing.
Matt Vienneau says they followed the route they think Nicole would have taken but there is nothing to suggest she made it to any of the sites she set out to see that day.
They say everyone in the area knows the story but doesn't recall seeing Nicole.
The two have put up posters in several different languages

http://www.cknw.com/news/news_local.cfm?ca...=news_local.cfm

[PorchlightEast]

My Sister, Nicole Vienneau, Has Gone Missing in Syria

My sister, Nicole Vienneau, has been missing in Syria since March 31st (49 days), near the town of Hama, while on a day-trip to see Qasr Ibn Wardan (a nearby castle) and the "Beehive Houses" or possibly the "Dead Cities". We found Nicole's gear at the Cairo Hotel, but no sign of her after that. I have flown to Syria with her long-time partner Gary to find her.

If you have any details or contacts in the area, please contact me at mattv99@hotmail.com.

May 19th (Evening):

Today marks seven weeks to the day that Nicole headed out for a day-trip and did not return. Gary and I attempted to re-create her trip by leaving the Cairo Hotel at 8:45, walking to the minibus station, taking a minibus to al-Hamra, walking along the road to see hitching opportunities, and then taking a local driver to the beehive houses (both places), the castle, and even to As'sa'en, a village on her hand-drawn map that no tourist would ever need to go to. We put up lots of posters, chatted with local bedouin at the market, and got the definite impression that she never made it to any of the tourist sites and no one has seen her. Frustrating.

The definite high points of these trips are the Syrians themselves. In As'sa'en they would look at the poster and call other people by phone to come see. They then took us to visit a local who spoke English. On the minibus back we met a soldier from one of the nearby bases who knew who we were just from looking at us, and said it was all over the base. Everyone we have met has been very hospitable and try their hardest to help.

Tomorrow we will meet with the police again and go over everything. They have been busy investigating Apamea. They offered to take us there Friday but we thought that was just for our sake. It's very comforting to see their aggressive follow-up on Nicole's trail.

On the multimedia side, we have updated the photos of Nicole here on the blog. The third photo down has her in the exact same clothes as she was wearing when she disappeared, minus the blue daypack that is in one of the other photos.

The "YouTube" video has been updated to reflect the latest information and pictures.

It will be difficult to leave Gary behind when I head back to Canada on Tuesday morning. This trip would have been much, much harder without him.


Here is a summary of my sister's information:

Passport name: Jacqueline Nicole Vienneau
Passport number: JP588938
Height: 5' 6"
Weight: approx 130 lb
Brown hair and brown eyes
Last seen wearing a long-sleeve red shirt with white sleeves and a small blue knapsack.
Age: 32 (looks younger)
She had a 6 month Syrian visa # 000166020, issued Oct 5, 2006 and good until Apr 5th 2007

A friend has added the "Nicole is Missing" posters to her website for easy downloading and printing if you wish to post them in the Hama area:

English Version
French Version
Arabic Version
Arabic Version (JPG)

On his own initiative, a friend of Nicole's in Vancouver has put up a "YouTube" video.

Here's a TV interview with me regarding Nicole, if anyone is interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-t0tyHMxDw

http://vienneau.livejournal.com/39588.html

Attached Image (Click thumbnail to expand)

[PorchlightEast]

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...070508/20070508

Brother of missing woman launches online search
Updated Tue. May. 8 2007 8:21 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The brother of a Canadian woman who vanished in Syria over a month ago has launched an online campaign to help find his sister.

Matthew Vienneau last saw his sister in mid-March when the siblings parted ways in Jordan after spending a month travelling together in Egypt.

He has spearheaded a search to find his sister using his online journal, YouTube, and Facebook in an attempt to mobilize fellow travellers in the Middle East and to contact anyone with information on her.

This was the fourth extended backpacking tour for Jacqueline Nicole Vienneau, 32, who learned when she first began travelling, at the age of 17, to keep in constant contact with her family when abroad.

"We have a sort of rule in the family to email every two weeks or call. She was contacting us more frequently than that, generally every four to six days or perhaps a little bit more," Vienneau told CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday.

"When she went without communication for about two weeks that seemed unusual," he said, adding that he knew something was wrong after three weeks without contact.

Vienneau sent her last email on March 29, two days before she left her budget hotel in the Syrian town of Hama for a day-trip to examine ruins about 60 kilometres away.

Her brother said the trip was considered standard by Western travellers. To get to the castle, travellers would first board a micro-bus and then walk or hitchhike the last six kilometres to the ruins.

"It's normally pretty routine," Vienneau said.

"I want to go to Syria and walk those six kilometres and see what could have happened, who she could have met, who was at the castle."

Described as a seasoned traveller, Vienneau was on the final leg of a seven-month trek through North Africa and the Middle East that was to conclude in Turkey last month. Turkish authorities have told the family she never entered the country.

Vienneau has begun the process of getting his paperwork in order to make the journey to Syria to look for his sister.

He said the Syrian ambassador to Canada has helped with getting him into the country, which will allow him to retrace his sister's steps and talk to anyone who might have seen her.

"You really need to let people see your face. The Arabic culture is very face-to-face and email and phone calls are not as personal. Being a family, they will empathize," Vienneau said.

His sister's belongings, which remained in her Hama hotel room, have since been retrieved by Canadian consular officials; her credit cards unused and her Syrian visa long expired.

Foreign Affairs has confirmed Syrian authorities are looking for the woman.

Vienneau invites anyone to check for updates on his blog at http://vienneau.livejournal.com or to send him an email at mattv99@hotmail.com

Jacqueline Nicole Vienneau is described as:

Height: 5' 6"
Weight: approx 130 lb
Brown hair and brown eyes
Age: 32 (looks younger)

[PorchlightEast]

http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/in...pic=21470&st=0&

http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightCana...topic=2026&st=0

[PorchlightEast]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/...c-vienneau.html

Vancouver woman missing in Syria
Last Updated: Friday, May 4, 2007 | 9:35 AM PT
CBC News
A Vancouver woman travelling alone in the Middle East has been missing in Syria for more than a month, says her brother who is co-ordinating a search for her.

Matthew Vienneau told CBC Radio on Friday that his sister Nicole was last seen on March 31 when she left her hotel near Hama for a day trip to a place called the Dead Cities, ancient ruins in northwest Syria.

Nicole Vienneau, 32, is missing in Syria, and was last seen on March 31.
(Vienneau family photo) But hotel staff told him she did not return. He has also been told that Syrian police are searching the area.

Vienneau said his 32-year-old sister is an experienced adventure traveller.

"You have hope that … maybe she's just in prison, or at this point, one of our best-case scenarios is that she's been kidnapped, which is a very weird situation to be in, but at least in that case we'd know that she's alive."

Vienneau told The Early Edition that Canadian Foreign Affairs officials have done what they can, but that most of the information on his sister has come from people in Canada and Syria — who read about Nicole on the internet and offered to help.

Now, her family is asking anyone with family or friends in Syria to help them trace what may have happened.

"But you hope that, you know, maybe it's just something happened, she's in the mountains and it's remote, or she got unexpectedly delayed somewhere in the desert."

Vienneau said his sister is a careful woman who doesn't take stupid chances.

"It's almost impossible to imagine that something might have happened. And the constant reassurances from the Syrians that nothing like this happens, it's very unusual, and if something had happened, we'd know about it.

"For someone to just disappear is so strange that it gives you hope that it's something so out there, we never would have thought of it, but she's OK and just waiting for us to come find her."

[PorchlightEast]

http://www.thestar.com/article/211149

Man using Web to track sister
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Links
View the blog at vienneau.livejournal.com or contact Matthew Vienneau at mattv99@hotmail.com.


Son of the late David Vienneau sets up blog to find sibling, missing for weeks in Mideast

May 07, 2007 04:30 AM
John Goddard
staff reporter

A Toronto man doggedly working the Internet has put together the route his sister took up to the day she mysteriously disappeared in Syria.

Matthew Vienneau, an information technology consultant, created a personal interactive website, or blog, to learn from other travellers where his sister Nicole was, what she was wearing and where she was going.

"We're still hoping to find people who have relatives among the Bedouin tribespeople or relatives in the Syrian travel industry," Vienneau, 34, said yesterday."Or, if we find out she's been kidnapped, that would be useful, too."

Nicole Vienneau, 32, is the daughter of David Vienneau, who joined the Star as a reporter in 1975, and who was Ottawa bureau chief when he left the paper for Global Television in 1998. He died of cancer three years ago at age 53.

Nicole is a veteran traveller. She moved to Vancouver from Toronto at 18 to attend university and has since travelled extensively.

Her last known whereabouts was the budget Cairo Hotel in Hama, a city north of Damascus.

On March 31, she apparently set out on a day trip to a series of historic sites some 60 kilometres away, on a route that would have involved some hitch-hiking, her brother said.

In February, Matthew Vienneau joined his sister in Egypt and they travelled together for a month as far as Petra, Jordan. Her plans were to proceed to Syria and Turkey.

The two kept in touch and when Matthew didn't hear from her for a few days, he contacted the Canadian embassy in Damascus. Last week, having made no progress on her whereabouts, he set up the blog.

"First, we had to figure out what country she was in," he said speaking for a concerned group of friends.

They learned how to trace her last email, discovering where she had crossed into Syria from Lebanon. The Turkish government confirmed to Canadian officials that she had not entered Turkey.

Travellers who saw the blog began checking hotels along Nicole's proposed route. One reported her registered at the Cairo Hotel, where the receptionist later told Matthew his sister had left her luggage.Matthew got an inventory of the clothing his sister left behind, compared it to his travel photos, and deduced what she must have been wearing that day.

A British traveller who reported where Nicole planned to go that day did the same trip two weeks later and described every step of the route.

"This woman said, `Every person I met invited me back to their place for tea,'" Matthew said. "They love to see foreigners. They're very friendly.'"

Matthew posted the route along with photos of Nicole in the missing outfit. A friend created an electronic poster with the information.

Yesterday, a Canadian traveller wrote to say he had made copies of the poster at an Internet café in Hama and was handing them out at the bus station.

"The weather was good and she was dressed appropriately," Matthew said when asked what might have happened. He said if there had been a road accident or Nicole was arrested, the family would have been informed."All the guide books say the Syrians are friendly. It could be a random act of violence, a woman wandering by herself down the road and someone decides to take advantage. I hope that's not the case.

Anybody interested can log on to: vienneau.livejournal.com or contact Matthew Vienneau at mattv99@hotmail.com.

[PorchlightEast]

http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/sto...ff8b8bd&k=22845

Vancouver woman missing in Middle East
CanWest, The Province
Published: Wednesday, May 02, 2007
The Department of Foreign Affairs is investigating the case of a missing Canadian woman who was travelling in the Middle East and vanished five weeks ago.

Nicole Vienneau, 32, of Vancouver was last heard from on March 29, when she was just outside of Damascus, her mother, Kathryn Murray, said from Toronto.

Murray said her daughter had embarked on her solo trip, which had taken her to Africa, at the beginning of November.


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Nicole Vienneau
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Font: ****"She's a seasoned traveller and she's a seasoned solo traveller," said Murray of Vienneau, an adventurous, active woman who was on her fourth major world trip and was in regular e-mail and phone contact with family and friends.

Murray said family members are working with Foreign Affairs and the RCMP.

She said they've been assured consulate officials overseas are "fully engaged" in the investigation.


Murray said the only thing they know for certain is that Vienneau did not enter Turkey, which was her destination after Syria.

A blog entry posted by her brother asks other backpackers for help in finding her.

A budget traveller, Vienneau typically stayed in inexpensive hotels and hostels.

Murray said Foreign Affairs has been in contact with the family on a daily basis.

"Part of the frustration they experience is the number of false alarms that happen when the traveller is inconsiderate and has not contacted anyone for a number of weeks and then turns up," she said.

"What happens is when you have a legitimate one, it's hard to get the embassies overseas interested in the beginning."

Vienneau, who has a fine-arts and business degree and worked at a number of jobs, was described by Murray as an active woman who played soccer and sang in a choir.

- CanWest News Service

[PorchlightEast]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/st...24c99ce86db&k=0

Brother launches Internet search for sister
B.C. woman last seen in Syria
Allison Hanes, National Post
Published: Monday, May 07, 2007
Matthew Vienneau last saw his sister haggling with a bus driver in Jordan in mid-March as the siblings parted ways following a month of touring Egypt, riding camels and camping out under the desert stars.

Nicole Vienneau's last e-mail came two weeks later, on March 29, as the Canadian traveller entered Syria from Lebanon on the final leg of a seven-month trek through North Africa and the Middle East that was to conclude in Turkey last month.

Just five weeks after that final reassuring message, Ms. Vienneau, a Vancouver resident, has gone missing in Syria and her brother has spearheaded a frantic global search to find her.


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Nicole Vienneau

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Font: ****Employing his blog, e-mail, online travel forums, Facebook, YouTube and Web sites to sound the alarm about her disappearance, Mr. Vienneau has managed to mobilize travellers on the ground in the Middle East, as well as diaspora Syrians with connections to their homeland.

"It keeps me from pondering the grimmer possibilities," Mr. Vienneau said of the long-distance search effort that has picked up steam in recent days as he has taken time off work and remained glued to his computer. "Whatever has happened to her is not good."

Mr. Vienneau has determined that his sister's last e-mail was sent from Al Masna, on the Syrian side of the border crossing with Lebanon that is on the road from Beirut to Damascus. He has learned that his sister was last seen two days later, on March 31, in the ancient Syrian city of Hama. A tipster told him she had been staying at the Cairo Hostel.

Staff there said she boarded a micro bus just 500 metres from their doorstep en route to a region strewn with ruins known as the Dead Cities, where she'd hoped to visit Qasr Ibn Wardan, a castle, and beehive houses known as Alqebab. She left her luggage behind, including her personal journal.
After that her trail goes cold.

Mr. Vienneau said his family - including two half-siblings and a stepbrother - is terribly worried, as his sister learned long ago never to violate her mother's sacrosanct order to write home every 14 days. Having trekked through far-flung locales like Southeast Asia, South America and East Africa, they know she would not simply wander off without making contact.

"Nicole is an experienced traveller. Something is definitely wrong," said Mr. Vienneau, whose father, David Vienneau, was the chief political correspondent for Global TV before he died of cancer in 2004. "There are lots of hopeful scenarios, but none of them are likely."

A travelling volunteer went through Ms. Vienneau's luggage and read her journal, offering crucial clues. Rifling through her bag it was determined what Ms. Vienneau was wearing on the day she went missing: a long-sleeved white shirt with a red T-shirt over top.

Syrian police have now been alerted to Ms. Vienneau's disappearance, as are Canadian consular officials, who have gone to Hama to collect her abandoned gear from the hostel, according to Rjean Beaulieu, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs.

While grateful for the assistance, Mr. Vienneau plans to travel to Syria himself, perhaps as early as the end of this week, along with his sister's boyfriend, Gary Schweitzer. The Syrian ambassador to Canada has promised prompt visas. Mr. Vienneau hopes that speaking to local people in person might make them more open to sharing anything they may know.

Hama is Syria's fourth-largest city, known for the giant waterwheels that once quenched its aqueducts. The city, which has a large Sunni population, was the scene of a bloody massacre in 1982, when then-president Hafez Al-Assad pounded the city with bombs to rout out the Muslim Brotherhood in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt and uprising.

Mr. Vienneau invites anyone to check for updates on his blog at vienneau.livejournal.com/39588.html#cutid1 - or to send him an e-mail at mattv99@hotmail.com.

[PorchlightEast]

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/213174

Brother's quest filled with hope and dread
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Syrian ambassador authorizes free visas for sibling, boyfriend to fly to Damascus to try to find missing Canadian woman

May 12, 2007 04:30 AM
Oakland Ross
Middle East Bureau

AMMAN, Jordan–If the world according to Nicole Vienneau had unfolded as it should, the 32-year-old global traveller would be arriving back in Canada on Monday, to be met by her mother at the airport in Toronto.

She would be tired but smiling, happy to be home but also probably a little sad to have finally come to the end of a long, mostly solo Middle Eastern trek.

But that emotional reunion is not what will be happening.

Instead, her older brother Matthew Vienneau, a 34-year-old self-employed information-technology consultant, expects to land in Damascus, Syria – on the very day she was supposed to come home.

There, he is to be met by officials from the Canadian embassy before launching a search for an adventurous and self-reliant woman who has been missing for nearly six weeks.

The next day, accompanied by Nicole's boyfriend, Gary Schweitzer of Vancouver, Vienneau will head for Hama, roughly 100 kilometres north of Damascus, where his sister was last seen before vanishing on March 31 or April 1.

Like much else about this worrisome tale, the date of her disappearance is uncertain.

"It's actually very frustrating," Vienneau said yesterday from Toronto.

He was referring to his attempts to pin down the exact date when Nicole fell out of contact with the world around her. "Right now, it's hazy."

The daughter of David Vienneau, a former Toronto Star reporter and Ottawa bureau chief who died of cancer three years ago, Nicole makes her home in Vancouver. She is an experienced backpacker who has taken many marathon journeys through some of the remotest regions in the world.

She was backpacking through Syria, intending to carry on northward to Turkey, when her track suddenly came to a mysterious end. According to her brother, she's made no bank transactions since the end of March.

Since his sister's disappearance first garnered public attention a week ago, Vienneau has continued to ride a psychological roller-coaster of hope and dread. Just the other day, he learned that the corpses of two so far unidentified women have turned up in Syria, and he immediately thought the worst.

But he is now convinced that neither body could be Nicole's. One was discovered on March 29, which is too early, while the other appears to be that of a woman who was out for a jog and was hit by a car on April 4.

"I assume we'll find out in a couple of days," he said yesterday. Since late April, Vienneau has been providing daily updates on a blog devoted to his sister's disappearance, and many Middle Eastern travellers and others have been pitching in to help in his efforts to find out what happened to Nicole.

"It's amazing what people have done," he said. "It's been really wonderful."

A Canadian teacher, who is working in the part of Syria where Nicole disappeared, spent a couple of days journeying in the countryside around Hama, questioning local people. Arabic speakers in different parts of the world have helped by translating documents or newspaper articles that have appeared in the Syrian press.

"It was someone on the Internet who said she'd been seen at this hotel," said Vienneau. He meant the Cairo Hotel in Hama, where his sister had been staying and where Canadian officials in Damascus later retrieved her belongings. The hotel waited three days before reporting her missing, he said.

Unfortunately, that report went unheeded, and little or nothing was done at the time.

It was not until Nicole had been out of contact for two weeks – her agreed-upon limit of silence – that family in Canada got well and truly worried, but still they decided not to over-react.

"We gave it an extra week," said Vienneau. "Foolishly, in hindsight."

Since then, he has been in almost daily contact with the Canadian embassy in Damascus. This week, he met with the Syrian ambassador in Ottawa, who authorized free visas for Vienneau and Schweitzer.

"She wanted to get out and enjoy the world," said Vienneau, who in the past has joined his sister on parts of the long and rugged treks that she loved.

If there is time, Vienneau will update his blog from Internet cafes along the way. Readers can follow his progress at vienneau.livejournal.com.

[PorchlightEast]

http://www.indiescribe.com/canada/index.html

According to Canada.com, Chantal Eustace writes that the young Vancouver resident, Nicole Vienneau, is still missing and her brother, Matthew, has heard nothing for several weeks, not a good omen for a single girl traveling alone in the Middle East.

The last contact anyone has had from Nicole was when she sent an email to her family and friends on March 29th. Since then, her brother has been trekking everywhere " ... around the globe, into backpacker inns and all the way to a remote castle in Syria. That's where the trail has run cold, he said."

"On April 22, Matthew posted a note on his blog, (http://vienneau.livejournal.com/39588.html) asking anyone with information on Nicole's whereabouts to e-mail him. On May 1, they used her last e-mail, sent on March 29, to track the internet protocol address and learned where she had sent it from at the border of Syria."

His appeals to the RCMP, the Foreign Service and Syrian police haven't done much, however he did get a tip from an American travel writer, on May 2; Nicole had been staying at a Cairo Hotel in Hamas, but she left early on March 31, and has not returned. "... Her backpack, journal and personal possessions hadn't been collected."

Matthew instructed the travel writer to read her journal, trying to guess where her next visit might be. His guess was the ruins of Qasr Ibn Wardan, 60 km. northeast of Hamas.

"It's out of the way, fairly remote and very difficult to get to," said Vienneau. "She likely took a bus to the nearby [village] of Al Hamra. . . then would have tried to hitchhike or otherwise, to get the rest of the way."

Her boyfriend, Gary Schweitzer of Vancouver, will most likely travel with her brother to Syria, to find out what happened. Although he is confident that she is able to take care of herself, he stated that he needed to know what has happened, good or bad. Good luck to them.

[PorchlightEast]

http://www.embassymag.ca/html/index.php?di...date=1179288000

Canadian Missing in Syria
Syria's ambassador to Canada, Jamil Sakr, met last week with a Canadian man whose sister has gone missing in the Middle Eastern country. Nicole Vienneau disappeared on April 1 as she was touring the country. According to her brother, Matthew Vienneau, who is now in Syria, police and government officials there have "been very thorough." "It's very clear Nicole's case is extremely important to the Syrian authorities," he wrote on a blog tracing his search.


Embassy, May 16th, 2007
TALKING POINTS

[PorchlightEast]

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/216281

Search continues for missing Canadian
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Syria considers Nicole Vienneau's disappearance a `personal affront,' brother says after 8-day hunt

May 22, 2007 04:30 AM
Oakland Ross
Middle East Bureau

A Canadian man was to head home to Toronto today after spending eight days in Syria searching for his younger sister, who vanished in the Middle Eastern country some seven weeks ago.

Matthew Vienneau did not find his sister Nicole.

But he also did not manage to determine what might have happened to her, either.

"In your darkest moments, you're pondering terrible horrors," Vienneau told the Star in an interview last night from Damascus, the Syrian capital. "You're imagining terrible scenarios."

On the other hand, said Vienneau, he managed to gauge for himself the impressive efforts Syrian authorities have made and continue to make in the search for Nicole, an experienced independent traveler, who was backpacking through Syria when she disappeared on or about March 31.

"They were looking very hard before," he said, referring to Syrian police in the region around Hama, a tourist destination north of Damascus. "But now I have a firmer confidence in their ability."

He did not learn what became of Nicole but was able to rule out some possibilities, which will help his ongoing search, mainly via the Internet, from Toronto.

Since late last month, the computer consultant has used a blog as an international clearing house for information about his sister, what she did, and whom she saw in the days before she vanished.

He means to carry on with those efforts.

"I can't imagine giving up."

Nicole's boyfriend – Gary Schweitzer of Vancouver – will stay in Syria to continue his search.

"Gary wants to stay here until he finds her," said Vienneau. "He hasn't reached the stage yet where he can go home."

In Syria, the two Canadians met personally with the governor of Hama province and the regional police chief.

"They said, `Even when you go home, we're going to keep searching.' They said: `This is a personal affront to us'."

But, after seven weeks with little in the way of concrete evidence about Nicole or her fate, it has become increasingly difficult to hope for new leads or sudden breakthroughs.

"That is our biggest barrier now, that seven-week delay."

When she disappeared, Nicole, 32, was on a long solo Middle East trek, that would have taken her to Turkey and then home to Canada –another of the rugged and ambitious travel adventures she favoured.

Nicole's and Matthew's father was David Vienneau, a former Toronto Star, reporter and Ottawa bureau chief, who died three years ago of cancer.

[Ell]

Nicoles site: http://vienneau.livejournal.com/39588.html

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[Ell]

PIC

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[PorchlightEast]

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=193756

Family's anguish as Vancouver backpacker still missing in Syria
Elaine O'Connor, CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, December 22, 2007


HandoutVancouver backpacker Nicole Viennau has been missing since March in the Middle East.
VANCOUVER -- There is one Christmas gift Matthew Vienneau and his family have been praying to receive this year: news of Vancouver's Nicole Vienneau, the backpacker who disappeared in Syria on March 31.

But Nicole's brother Matthew, who has been waging an intense online sleuthing campaign for almost nine months now, would settle for this: a new tip.

"It's not that I have given up. It's that I have run out of things to do. I'm sitting here idly waiting for information to come in, but the information has stopped coming in because I haven't found any new information to follow up on," he said Friday.

"It's tough. We're trying to get used to the idea that we'll never find her."

The information has dwindled as the Vienneaus and Nicole's partner Gary Schweitzer have had to endure several painful anniversaries.

October marked a full year since Nicole departed for her Northern Africa and Middle Eastern trip - it's been that long since Schweitzer or her mother have seen her.

On Dec. 6, Nicole would have celebrated her 33rd birthday with her family and friends. On that day, her mother Kathryn Murray posted a special message on Matthew's blog.

"I cannot put in words how painful the past few months have been, not knowing where my daughter is or whether she is still alive. A nightmare from which there is no relief. Even if something tragic has occurred, I will find no peace until I bring her home. I am not interested in retribution, I just want her back," she wrote.

"I am appealing to anyone who has information about her disappearance to let us know. Someone in Syria does know what has happened. And probably more than one person since it would have required more than one person to 'take' Nicole as she would not have gone willingly or quietly. The reward is still out there. Rest assured, anyone who does provide us any information will be duly compensated," she wrote.

"Wherever you are, Nicole, happy birthday sweetheart. We all love you and miss you terribly."

Now the family has to prepare to endure Christmas without her.

"We're going to have problems at Christmas because it's not quite the celebratory event it usually would be. We are not really sure how many guests we'll be having over and things like that," Matthew said.

Nicole was last seen the morning of March 31 by staff of the Cairo Hotel in Hama, Syria, as she left for a day of sightseeing. She has not been seen since.

But the family hasn't given up.

Nicole's mother, stepfather Bruce, and likely her boyfriend Gary plan to head back to Syria to continue searching and meeting with high-level Syrian officials early in the new year. They plan to bring a file of all the information Matthew has collected over the past several months to aid in the investigation.

"Just to let people know that she's still missing. Because we have heard from rumours and sources that some of the people and police even think that she has been found already," Vienneau said.

And there have been some recent successes. They have contacted almost all the key people on the Hotel Cairo guest list who may have had information about Nicole.

"Unfortunately, some of them we found six months later and they could barely remember anything other than random traveller chit-chat. But they were able to confirm with them what the hotel said about where she was going and things. But no big clues like we had hoped."

A fundraiser in the fall raised about $17,000 - a significant chunk from her former workplace CB Ellis in Vancouver - which helped fund research in Syria and the $20,000 reward, which remains unclaimed.

Meanwhile, her former employer has sent out a mass e-mail this month to remind their 1,500-plus employees not to forget her and urging them to contact the Vienneaus if they thought they could help.

If you have any relevant information or can offer help to the family (such as Arabic language assistance), e-mail Matthew at tips@findnicolevienneau.com or syrianicole@hotmail.com.

For more information visit: www.findnicolevienneau.com or http://vienneau.livejournal.com.

Vancouver Province

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