Purple suitcase packs a surprise
Ontario woman finds neighbour’s family films in bag bought in Newfoundland
“What are the chances of us being such good friends, living so close, me buying the suitcase?”
TONYA RITCHIE
It was by chance or fate that Tonya Ritchie spent $5 on a purple suitcase she found in a Salvation Army in St. John’s, N.L., three years ago.
She had needed a bag to haul frozen cod home to Shelburne, Ont., during a trip out east for a wedding, and this one, she said, screamed “Buy me!”
Little did she know that tucked in the bag’s front pocket — zipped shut and stored in her attic for much of the time since then — were three eight-millimetre film reels containing the childhood memories of a friend, Janet Piper, 51, who lives just three doors down.
“What are the chances of us being such good friends, living so close, me buying the suitcase?” Ritchie, 40, said.
Both women know their tale flirts with the impossible, but that’s what makes it all the more meaningful to them.
In January, Ritchie retrieved the suitcase for another trip east when she discovered the tapes. Neither she nor her daughter, who’d used the bag a few times, had opened the front pocket before.
With one labelled “New Year’s Eve 1966-1967,” the tapes, marked with Canada post stamps, belonged to James Brander of 17 Beaver St. in Glen Williams, Ont.
Ritchie and her husband Bob realized their neighbour grew up there, so when Piper’s husband James happened to stop by, Bob showed him the tapes.
James Piper only needed a glance at the name for the story to shift to the surreal. Brander was Janet Piper’s father who died nine years ago. When Janet Piper came home that night, they asked her if she knew what the tapes were. Of course, she said. Her dad always took videos — she’d recognize those 8 mm films anywhere. Then they handed her the boxes with her father’s handwriting.
“I was blown away,” Janet Piper said. “We’re all still blown away.”
Even after some sleuthing, nobody has any clue who owned the bag or how the films got to Newfoundland. Nobody in the Piper family recognizes the bright suitcase.
At first Janet Piper thought the tapes were lost when her family moved from Glen Williams to a farm near Shelburne in the early 1970s. But one of the tapes thwarts that theory as it’s from 1978 or 1979. The next guess is that Piper’s brother, who lives in Calgary, lost the tapes when he converted her father’s 40 or 50 home videos to VHS in the early1990s, she said. But that doesn’t answer the question as to how they would they have travelled across Canada. As far as Janet Piper or anyone in her family knows, her father never went to Newfoundland. Her parents travelled east in a motor home about 15 years ago, but stopped in Nova Scotia. The Salvation Army, where Ritch- ie purchased the luggage, has since closed. There was no identification on the bag.
With the detective work proving fruitless, all there was left to do was enjoy the tapes. On Sunday, the women rented a projector and had friends and family over to watch the videos.
One was of rides and scenery at Disney World, where her parents travelled in the late ’70s. Another was of Janet Piper’s grandmother’s birthday party. The New Year’s tape showed a 6-year-old Piper dancing at her uncle’s house and a couple no one remembers kissing in the background.
The tapes were dark and splotchy in parts and her father never appeared on the screen, but they made Janet Piper feel closer to her dad, she said.
Tonya Ritchie is grateful she was able to give this gift of history to her friend.
While the origin of the suitcase remains a mystery, “I have a feeling that it’s not over yet,” Janet Piper said.
“The story of the purple suitcase is not over.”