Humanity
She wrote a note in a bottle decades ago. It just showed up at her old school
By Sydney Page The Washington Post
Published Dec. 2, 2024
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When Makenzie Van Eyk was in fourth grade in 1998, she tossed a message in a bottle in a lake as part of a school assignment. She figured she'd never see it again.
Van Eyk, who lives in small town in Ontario, hadn't thought about the bottle in 26 years. Then she got a phone call last month from her children's school.
"Do you have a few minutes? We need to talk to you," the school secretary said.
Van Eyk was alarmed.
"I was really worried that something happened with my kids," said Van Eyk, whose daughter, Scarlet, 9, and son, Huxley, 6, both attend St. John the Baptist Catholic Elementary School in Belle River.
The secretary told Van Eyk that everything was fine, and that she was calling with very interesting news. A kindergarten student at the school had found Van Eyk's decades-old message in a bottle floating near the shore of Lake St. Clair - which is part of the Great Lakes system - not far from where Van Eyk originally tossed it as a fourth grader all those years ago.
Van Eyk was floored.
"I instantly started crying. I was very emotional," said Van Eyk. "It was unbelievable."
The finding felt unbelievable for several reasons. Not only was it found by a student named River who attends the same school Van Eyk did when she completed the assignment, but Van Eyk's daughter, Scarlet, is currently a fourth-grader at the school.
"I was awestruck by the irony of me being 9, writing the letter, and my daughter being 9," Van Evk said.
Plus, Van Eyk and her family moved to Belle River - where Van Eyk grew up - about a year ago from London, Ontario, a two-hour drive away. The facts that they were living in Belle River - which has a population of about 10,000 - when the bottle was found, and that her children attend the same school she did when she wrote the letter, seemed surreal.
"It felt like a sign that we're on the right track and in the right place," she said, adding that Scarlet's teacher shared the letter with her class, and Scarlet was elated. "My kids were buzzing for the whole weekend."
A current teacher at the school also got in touch with Roland St. Pierre, Van Eyk's fourth grade teacher, to tell him about the bottle. He was equally stunned.
"It brought back a lot of good memories," said St. Pierre, who retired in 2005. He taught at the school for 33 years and was himself an elementary student there.
The message in a bottle assignment was part of a geography unit St. Pierre taught, specifically focusing on the Great Lakes, as well as a unit on the water cycle.
"We read a book called 'Paddle-to-the-Sea, '" Van Eyk said. "It was about a little boy who carved a paddle, and that piece of wood floated all the way through the Great Lakes."
"I thought, let's do kind of the same thing with our bottles," said St. Pierre.
Each of his 30 students were tasked with writing a letter, and including at least one thing they learned in class about the Great Lakes or the water cycle.
At the time they started the message in a bottle assignment, Van Eyk said, the school had just installed its first computer lab - so the students typed their letters.
"Having a computer lab was a really big deal," she said. "That was super-novel."
"This letter is coming from Makenzie Morris and I go to St. John the Baptist school," Van Eyk typed in her letter.
"Do you know that all the Great Lakes spell H O M E S ?" she wrote. "I thought that was cool." The Great Lakes include Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, and Lake Superior.
The letter ends with "Please contact us at:" and provides contact information for the school. The phone number listed is the same as it is today.
Although Van Eyk doesn't remember much about doing the assignment, she vividly recalls sealing the bottles with wax.
St. Pierre said Van Eyk's bottle is the third that has been found. The first two were found within a couple of months of the assignment.
"The other strange coincidence, besides Makenzie writing it in Grade 4 and her daughter Scarlet being in Grade 4, is that the little guy who found the bottle, River, I taught his father," St. Pierre said. "It could have been found by anybody or it could have never been found."
St. Pierre and Van Eyk decided to meet up in person at the same spot they threw the letters in the lake. It was a happy reunion for both of them.
"Standing there with him, where we threw the letters, all felt very full circle and beautiful," said Van Eyk.
"We gave each other a big hug," said St. Pierre, adding that they reminisced about their time together at the school. "She was a good student. Makenzie had a lot of energy; she was spunky."
Van Eyk, who is an educator, said the story highlights the lifelong connections students make with their teachers.
"I think it goes back to the power of education ... and just the energy that you put into teaching and how it comes back around," she said.
Van Eyk is collaborating with the school to create a permanent display for the letter, so future students can delight in the unexpected finding, too.
"It certainly feels like a big treasure for me," she said.
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