Newfoundland message in a bottle found in Norway 34 years later
When Jennifer-Lynn Boudreau was sipping her coffee and reading through Facebook on Monday, she was surprised to see a post she was tagged in from an old classmate, detailing a letter that had washed up on a beach in northern Norway.
The letter, dated Oct. 3, 1988, was written by an eight-year-old Boudreau as part of a Grade 3 English project while learning about pen pals.
"When I looked at the post, it said 'Jen, I think this is your letter.' And I kind of was like, 'what letter?," Boudreau told CBC Radio Thursday.
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"We all, as a class, wrote these letters and put them in a bottle and away they went. And that's basically the project. … It's crazy, it's so crazy. I just can't imagine how this happened, really. It's incredible."
Jennifer-Lynn Boudreau wrote this letter and put it inside a plastic bottle in 1988. (Submitted by Jennifer-Lynn Boudreau)
Over three decades after Boudreau put her message in a bottle into the Atlantic, it was washed up on the other side.
The letter reads: "Hello, my name is Jennifer. I am eight years old. I'm in Grade 3 at St. Peter's Primary School, Mount Pearl, near St. John's. Our teacher is Mr. McDonald. I have many nice friends at school. Please write me back."
Cara Rocks, whose boyfriend Trym Lyche Hagem found the bottle, said it was amazing to see it washed up on the beach and thought it would be fun to try to track down Boudreau.
"That day, they picked up something like 27 cubic metres of garbage, but still decided to look at this one bottle and look inside it," Rocks told CBC News from Oslo.
"I think they were very excited to find it. But it never crossed their mind that they would ever find the person whose letter it was."
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Rocks immediately contacted her sister-in-law — originally from Halifax — who put out a call on Facebook in search of Boudreau.
Eli Lillis and Trym Lyche Hagem found Boudreau's message in a bottle in Norway. (Submitted by Jennifer-Lynn Boudreau)
One hour later, Rocks and Boudreau connected.
"I just think it's so heartwarming. I just love that this has happened," Rocks said.
Boudreau said she and her son will keep up the connection with her new pen pal, and has plans for her son to maybe find his own one day.
"When we get the letter back, we're going to respond to Cara and her boyfriend. And then we're going to keep that going," she said.
"But I think on Oct. 3, 2023, my little guy is throwing a bottle in the ocean."
This article, written by Alex Kennedy, was originally published by CBC News on July 2, 2023. It contains files from The Broadcast.
