Student stunned after discovering personal connection to message in a bottle found after 26 years
Topics: News, World News
Gerrard Kaonga
Featured Image Credit: CBC
Topics: News, World News
In a bizarre turn of an event a student found out that they had a very personal connection to a letter recently discovered despite it being written before they were born.
A student in Ontario, Canada, just got one shocking surprise after a schoolwork project from 26 years ago ended up having a very close tie to her.
A kindergarten student, River Vandenberg, from St. John the Baptist Catholic Elementary School in Belle River, Ontario, found a plastic bottle after hopping sandbar to sandbar while out with his grandmother ‘looking for treasure’.
When they opened the bottle and looked at the letter, they realized it hadn’t come from some far away place but was actually written by a student at his school.
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The letter read: “This letter is coming from Makenzie Morris and I go to St John the Baptist School. I am in Grade 4 in Mr. St. Pierre's class.
“My letter is about water in the Great Lakes. We read a book called Paddle-to-the-Sea. It was a very good book.
“The story was about a little boy who carved a paddle person out of wood and put it in the water and it travelled through all the Great Lakes. Do you know that all the Great Lakes spell HOMES? I thought that was pretty cool.
"I learned at school that water has to go through water cycles to get all the bad stuff out, like germs and lots of other things. The water has been there since God created the world. Isn't it funny to think that you might be drinking the same water Jesus did?
"P.S. Please contact us at St. John the Baptist School. From Makenzie Morris."
However, upon communication with the school, they found out that the letter was actually very old, 26 years old in fact and was linked to a student currently at the school.
As part of a school project back in 1998, mother Makenzie Van Eyk (formerly Morris) wrote the letter. Her bottle was one of 30 thrown into Lake St. Clair.
Oddly enough her daughter, Scarlet, goes to the same school and is also in grade 4.
When the letter was returned to the school by the kindergartner and his grandmother, Scarlet’s teacher read the letter out to her class.
Scarlet said that when her teacher read the note to her class, she waited until the end to say the name of the person who wrote it.
Scarlet said: "My mouth completely dropped. And everyone was like, 'Who's that? Who's that?' And I was like, 'My mother.'"
When informed of the odd turn of events, Van Eyk said she remembers writing the letter over two decades ago and even sealed the bottle with wax.
She said: "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."