It was like a random note to myself nearly three decades in the future.
It’s rare that messages in bottles are seen by anyone, let alone their immediate family. However, that’s exactly what happened to Makenzie Van Eyk when she dropped a note in a lake and her daughter read it to her – 26 years later.
“I definitely don’t think about it often, so I was very surprised,” the Canuck told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as he recounted the improbable occurrence.
The correspondence in a bottle was part of an assignment Canuck took on in 1998 while in fourth grade at St. John the Baptist Catholic Elementary School in Belle River, Ontario.
She was tasked with writing about water quality in the Great Lakes and then bottling the paper and throwing it into Lake St. Louis. Clair.
Makenzie then likely forgot about the school project until this fall, when River Vandenberg, a kindergartner at the school, discovered ale mail while visiting the body of water with his grandmother.
“I thought it was a map to kill a cemetery or something,” said the kindergarten student, who after reading it realized it wasn’t.
“This letter is from Makenzie Morris and I go to St John the Baptist School. I am in the 4th grade at Mr. St. Pierre’s class,” the message said. “My paper is about water in the Great Lakes. We read a book called Paddle-to-the-Sea. It was a very good book.”
Confused, Vandenberg and his grandmother Michelle drove to the elementary school, where a fourth-grade teacher read the message to a class that included Makenzie’s daughter Scarlet.
She couldn’t believe her ears. “My mouth completely dropped,” cried the bewildered trunk. “And they all said, “Who is he?” Who is he?’ And I was like “My mother.”
It was strangely a full-circle moment for her mother Makenzie, who had always wondered what happened to the note.
“It was unforgettable to do something like that, to throw something away and think maybe someone will find it later,” she said.
Roland St. Pierre, the now-retired teacher who dreamed of the job all those years ago, was equally moved by the amazing discovery.
“I had forgotten all about it, so it was a real shock,” said the former lecturer, adding that he was amazed that the note had survived for “26 years without being destroyed”.
While certainly unlikely, this is not the longest a message in a bottle has lasted before being found.
That honor goes to a 200-year-old message in a bottle that was discovered during an archaeological dig in northern France in September.
The message was written by archaeologist PJ Féret, who wrote that he orchestrated an excavation at the same site in 1825.
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Image Source : nypost.com