RC-Monster Forums - Canadian conspiracy...?

Lightweight journalistic follow up...

Deep River is a model town:

I hate it.

For living here has got me down:

I hate it.

Although the town is trim and neat,

With cosy homes on every street,

Though saying so is not discreet,

I hate it.

DEEP RIVER was a utopia built to house scientists working on the first atomic bomb, and one of their heirs, Lachlan Cranswick, an Australian scientist missing in the harsh Canadian winter, chose to include this mordant 1958 poem by a local physicist on his personal webpage.

The town has a reputation for a kind of tiresome near-perfection made for parody.

Not for nothing did the film director David Lynch have Naomi Watts's character in Mulholland Drive explain her difficulties coping with Hollywood.

''I just came here from Deep River, Ontario, and now I'm in this … dream place,'' she says. ''You can imagine how I feel.''

Deep River was also the name of the apartment block in another Lynch film, Blue Velvet.

Mr Cranswick's disappearance has an almost Lynch-like sense of absurdity.

Not only does it hint at a dark side of utopia, but his work as a crystallographer - the field of science determining the arrangement of atoms in solids - prompted old Cold War paranoia of stolen nuclear secrets.

But his family in Melbourne says he is a ''stereotypical geek''. Townsfolk paint a picture of a well-liked man, telling the Herald Mr Cranswick was ''enthusiastic, hard-working and dependable'', known locally as the Australian who loved sailing on the wide Ottawa River in summer and, come winter, for his adoption of that Canadian obsession, the sport of curling.

But Mr Cranswick seemed to have an interior life far removed from the town's dull image.

His personal website reveals a man with bower-bird interests. These ranged from an obsession with suicide rates in the United States, Japan, Britain and Australia, the writings of Japanese Kamikaze pilots, Quebec's suicide ''hot spot'', ''suicide clubs'', The Complete Manual on Suicide to holocaust scenarios of nuclear attack, chemical poisoning, terrorist attacks and extensive works on the morality of war.

On the other side of the ledger, the Monash University-educated scientist's website also lists the lyrics of Ray Brown and the Whispers' 1965 hit Fool, Fool, Fool.

Mr Cranswick, 41, was last seen at work at the Atomic Energy of Canada's Neutron Beam Centre in Chalk River laboratories on January 18.

In 1944, Chalk River, along with Los Alamos, New Mexico, was among research sites for the Manhattan Project, the code name to develop atomic bombs used on Japan.

But in January Mr Cranswick had finished running experiments for an international contract when he left findings on his desk for posting later, and caught the afternoon bus home to nearby Deep River.

He arrived at his small white weatherboard home in Summit Avenue, sent an email at 6.30pm, put his garbage cans out and vanished.

When he did not show up for work several days later and also missed a game with the Deep River Curling and Squash Club, friends went looking for him and found his front door unlocked, his wallet, keys, camera and GPS in the house, and his car, skis and snowshoes in the garage.

Mr Cranswick had a reputation for walking late at night.

''We know he liked to walk the trail system around Deep River, and at odd hours,'' said Ontario Provincial Police Detective Constable Chris Pinkerton. ''We are only speculating what may have happened.''

The local police used sniffer dogs and snowmobiles to search trails around the town but they were hampered by rain. Eventually a helicopter was brought in as well. They found no evidence of foul play or indication of suicide.

Police called off the ground search last week.