A New Brunswick man has reunited with some precious family photos after they were swept away by floodwaters.
Lisa Sanderson says she found dozens of photos while she was trying to protect her home from rising floodwater in Grand Bay – Westfield, N.B. last week.
Determined to track down their rightful owner, she plucked the pictures from the waves and floating debris.
“They all kind of washed in one clump and then as they were drying, we just pulled them apart and let them dry,” says Sanderson.
She says she didn’t recognize anyone in the photos, but the mystery was solved a few days later when a neighbour from a few houses away came to visit Sanderson, and see if he could do anything to help her.
“She said, ‘Oh, we found some pictures. Are they yours?’” recalls Tim Humphrey. “And sure enough, they were.”
But Humphrey hadn’t even realized the keepsakes were missing.
He says the photos had been stored in a plastic bag high on a shelf in his basement so he thought they were safe from the floodwater. He figures they were probably knocked over by the waves and carried away.
“His property has sustained quite a bit of damage so anything that he gets back in one piece is good,” says Sanderson.
Humphrey says he is especially relieved to be reunited with precious photos of his mother, who had Parkinson’s disease. He moved back home to Grand Bay – Westfield to care for her.
“The only important ones were the ones of my mother, who passed away a few years ago,” he says. “Those things you can’t replace. Anything else can be replaced.”
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jonathan MacInnis
