Message in a bottle connects New Brunswick teen to young Ontario girl

Seven-year-old Scarlett Robichaud spends two weeks in Portage Vale, N.B., every summer visiting her great-grandparents, and while every visit is special she made an extra special memory this year.

On July 8, Scarlett threw a message in a bottle into a river.

“It said my name and my age and my address,” she said.

Her reason behind it made a lot of sense.

“I wanted to see if I would make a new friend,” said Scarlett.

Just 10 days later, Scarlett received an email.

“I just said that I have never found one living for 19-years at that place. I never found anything like it and I thought it was really sweet and special that I did,” said 19-year-old Sophie Sheppard.

Sheppard says she found the bottle stuck in between two trees while visiting her mom and childhood home.

“I thought somebody was just littering, to be honest, I thought somebody had just tossed that bottle in the river and just let it go, so I went over to pick it up and there was a little message in it.”

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Scarlett is now back in Oshawa, Ont., and while her message didn’t make it out of Portage Vale, it did still connect two people from two different provinces.

“We would like to meet with her next summer when we go down for our vacation,” said Scarlett’s grandmother, Dianne Charlery.

“We go there for the last four years since my parents have moved down there, so this is exciting. I didn’t really think that we’d find somebody. It was just a Monday afternoon, let’s try a message in a bottle, and here we are.”

Sheppard says she plans to write Sophie a letter – not just an email.

“I got a letter in a bottle, a little note, so I feel like I’ve got to send her a little letter back,” she said.

“Give her something to be excited for. Open something up in the mail.”

It’s now a summertime memory shared between strangers despite their distance and their age difference, and it’s all thanks to a little luck.

“It’s a memory she’ll always remember I think for sure, this one,” said Charlery.

For more New Brunswick news visit our dedicated provincial page.