Message in a bottle’s author found
For more than a year, Brigitte Bjarnason has been wondering about the Newfoundlander whose message in a bottle landed on a beach near her home in Iceland. Yesterday, after reporting on Bjarnason’s find, The Telegram tracked down 22-year-old Colin Greene, author of the long-lost letter.
In an e-mail, Greene’s friend Madison Tiller suggested Greene could be contacted directly.
“I’m sure he would love to hear about this!” Tiller said.
Surprised
Greene sounded surprised by the news.
“I don’t have very much memory of writing it at all, but my parents do. (They) thought it was crazy, because (Iceland is) so far away,” Greene said.
When he was 10 years old, Greene and his two siblings each wrote messages and gave them to their great uncle to release into the water from his boat just off of Tilting, on Fogo Island. Against all odds, 11 years later his letter was found several thousand kilometres away.
“I do remember the two drawings, the two happy faces on the let- ter. I remember drawing those (often) when I was younger,” Greene said.
The happy faces, titled “Ernie & Bob,” were followed by a request for a postcard from whoever found his bottle.
“We tried to write him a postcard from Iceland, but didn’t get an answer. Maybe he doesn’t lives in St. John’s any longer,” Bjarnason wrote in an earlier e-mail.
Bjarnason’s hope was that the message’s sender would eventually know his precious work had been found.
Greene is getting ready to move to Ontario to pursue heritage carpentry, and is no longer a 10-yearold who likes to make drawings of Ernie and Bob. But the success of his small plastic vessel might encourage today’s 10-year-olds to have a little faith in the sea.