A family in Canada is getting a message from the past that they didn’t expect, and they are enjoying it.
Makenzie Van Eyk told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on November 6 that she for school put a message in a bottle and threw it into Lake St. Clair in 1998. She forgot about it until her daughter found it 26 years later.
In fourth grade, Van Eyk was asked to write a letter about the water in the Great Lakes at St. John the Baptist Catholic Elementary School in Belle River, Ontario. She told the journal that she did so.
Her message was in a bottle that she threw into Lake St. Clair. She forgot about it right away.
The bottle wasn’t found until River Vandenberg, a kindergartener at the same Ontario school, found it on a pier.
“I thought [the letter] was from this year or maybe last year at most,” Vandenberg’s grandma told CBC. *There was no date on the letter. It was sent to the school. His teacher called him later that day to say it was from 1998. “I was shocked.”
It was a treat for Van Eyk’s daughter Scarlet, who happened to be in Vandenberg’s classroom when the teacher read the note.
The name that was written on the paper 26 years ago was read out loud by the teacher at the end of the school day.
Scarlet told CBC that she was shocked. “Everyone asked, ‘Who is it? Who is that? I then yelled, “My mom!”
When Van Eyk found the message, she couldn’t believe how long it had been kept. She remembers writing the note and putting wax on it to keep it in the bottle.
Van Eyk told CBC that he was “very surprised” because it wasn’t something he thought about very often.
“I think that process has really stuck with me,” she said. The computer lab that our school got at the same time was one of the first things I ever printed on paper and used. “I remember how memorable it was to throw something and hope that someone would find it later.”
The idea came from Roland St. Pierre, who was her teacher. He told the source that he had “forgotten all about” the project until the school called to tell him about the new information. He said it “was a real shock.”
The retired teacher said it was “emotional” to learn that one of the bottles had stood the test of time. “For it to survive 26 years without breaking down, it’s kind of surprising,” he said.
