Her Message In A Bottle Was Discovered 26 Years After She Tossed It Into A Lake
In 1998, Makenzie Van Eyk was in the fourth grade. As part of a class project, she typed a letter, printed it out, rolled it up, and stuffed it into a plastic bottle. Then, she and the rest of her classmates tossed their messages in bottles into a lake.
Now, 26 years later, Makenzie is married and has kids of her own. Her bottle was discovered by a student who attended the same school she did all those years ago.
The bottle actually ended up in her daughter’s classroom. Her daughter is in the same grade she was at the time she wrote the message.
Ever since the fourth grade, Makenzie has always wondered what happened to her message in a bottle. Finally, she has received an answer to her question.
“I got a phone call from the school secretary, and she said, ‘Do you have a couple minutes?'” Van Eyk said.
“Typically, when the school calls and asks that question, you’re usually pretty frightened as a parent, but she said, ‘It’s good news. I just need you for a few moments. We found a letter that you wrote, and I think you’re going to want to hear this.'”
This fall, a student named River Vandenberg found the bottle while exploring the shores of Lake St. Clair in Ontario with his grandmother.
They opened the bottle and read the letter inside, which said: “This letter is coming from Makenzie Morris, and I go to St. John the Baptist School. I am in grade four in Mr. St. Pierre’s class…P.S. Please contact us at St. John the Baptist School.”
Vandenberg is a kindergartner at St. John the Baptist Catholic Elementary School. He brought the letter to school with him and had a teacher read it out loud to a group of fourth graders.
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One of the fourth graders was Makenzie’s daughter, Scarlet Van Eyk. She recognized her mother’s maiden name.
The teacher who assigned the project back in 1998 was named Roland St. Pierre. He is now retired, but he remembered how he came up with the idea for the project. It was after his class read the children’s book Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling Clancy Holling.
The book is about a hand-carved canoe that travels from the Great Lakes through the St. Lawrence Seaway to the ocean.
He then instructed his students to write letters introducing themselves and explaining what they had learned about the Great Lakes from the book.
They tucked the papers into bottles, sealed them with wax, and took a little field trip to the pier at the end of the Belle River, which connects to Lake St. Clair.
The fourth graders dropped their bottles into the water there. Within a few months, some of the bottles were found. But others remained in the lake for over two decades.
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