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Mom's childhood message in a bottle obtained by daughter 26 years after it was sent

Published Nov 11, 2024 2:41 pm

A Canadian family was surprised to learn that a message in a bottle, written and tossed nearly 30 years ago by their mother, had been found by their daughter.

In a report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Makenzie Van Eyk recounted that she and her class wrote letters for a school project and placed them into Lake St. Clair in 1998. She was in fourth grade at the time.

Little did she know that 26 years later, her letter would find its way to her child, Scarlet.

The bottle was first discovered by kindergartener River Vandenberg, who goes to the same elementary school as Makenzie. The young boy found the bottle near the same spot where it was originally released into Lake St. Clair.

"I thought it was a map to kill a grave digger or something," River said.

The boy's grandmother, Michele, shared that there was no date on the letter, so they assumed it had just been sent recently. After sending it to the school, she was shocked when she was told it dated back to 1998.

A teacher at the school then decided to surprise Scarlet by reading the note to her class. The teacher waited until the end to say the name of the writer.

"My mouth completely dropped. And everyone was like, 'Who's that? Who's that?' And I was like, 'My mother,'" Scarlet said.

What's even more special about the whole thing is how Scarlet was also in the same grade as when her mom first wrote the letter.

When Makenzie learned about the remarkable discovery, she said she was "very surprised" as she "definitely wasn't thinking about [my letter] often."

Despite the time that has passed, she still "absolutely" remembers writing the letter, saying, "I think that process really stuck with me. This was also right when our school got a computer lab … one of the first things that I ever printed on paper and got to do something with."

"It was memorable to do something like that, throw something and think maybe someone will find it later," she added.

Meanwhile, the teacher who came up with the whole thing, Roland St. Pierre, admitted that he had forgotten all about the project until the school contacted him about the recent finding.

"It was a real shock. For it to survive 26 years without breaking down, it's kind of surprising," he emphasized. "It's emotional."

In her letter, Makenzie talked about reading a book called Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling, which was about a little boy who carved a wooden model of a person in a canoe and set it free to travel the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.