Bottle openers
Message in a bottle found after 18 years
A message in a bottle has resurfaced more than 20 years after it was sent adrift.
A message in a bottle has resurfaced after being thrown by a six-year-old boy into the waters of the Great Bras d’Or channel almost two decades ago.
The message, written in pencil, reads: “Dear you, I am glad you have found this bottle.”
It was picked up last weekend by Mary Walker and her husband Chris Livingstone, who own Granny’s Country Cottage gift shop in North Sydney.
Walker had been searching for driftwood to be used as Christmas ornaments when the discovery was made.
“We were just out for a walk at my parents’ place, just out around there, right on the water out by the Seal Island Bridge,” said Livingstone.
The couple wondered about the possibilities of where the glass bottle might have travelled from. They discovered under the cap a letter dated July
14, 2000, by a boy from nearby Sydney Mines.
The couple posted a photograph of the letter on social media and discovered within seconds that its author was now living about 2,000 kilo- metres away.
“Within seconds people were bang-bang-bang ‘Oh yeah, we know Greg White’ and probably an hour later Mary was on the phone with him.”
North York, Ont., resident Greg White, now 24, remembers throwing the bottle into the water off the Seal Island Bridge during his first summer spent at the Seal Island Campground located just a short distance from where the bottle was found.
An adult had included White’s childhood address in hopes of hearing from whoever might have found it.
“We were on our way to the trailer and we stopped on the bridge and threw it off,” said White by phone from Ontario. “That was only one of a few (bottles) — many times over the years it would come to your head, ‘I wonder if any of them are ever going to be found.’”
White said he was asleep when the Facebook posting was made after plowing snow for the City of Toronto the night before.
After about seven or eight phone calls from friends and family members, he decided to answer a call from his mother telling him to log onto his social media account.
“I went on Facebook and right away I had 50-some notifications,” said White, who also trains harness-racing horses. “I was shocked, really. It’s something that you don’t expect to ever happen. I was kind of surprised that it didn’t go very far.”
Livingstone said the bottle appears to have only travelled a few hundred metres in 18 years, but said the romantic in him hopes it spent some time bobbing around the lake.
The letter was slightly damp from moisture, although its metal seal didn’t show much rust.
“My folks’ place, I mean you could almost see (the campground) from there, we’re just the other side of the bridge,” Livingstone said. “I don’t know if it just got lodged somewhere and the last big storm dislodged it because I know the spot where we found it is walked all the time. It took 18 years to go about half a kilometre.”
Livingstone and Walker said they were both surprised with how quickly the mystery of the letter was solved.
“Years ago, you would have put the picture in the paper and tried to see if someone noticed or whatnot,” Livingstone said.
White said he hopes to get a picture with the letter during a trip home this summer to see his family.