Stephane Munro said he fishes “practically every day”. On August 15, he and his brother were at one of their usual spots, a small beach near a paper mill where the St Charles and St Lawrence rivers meet in the Canadian province.
That day, the brothers had stayed out fishing longer than usual, despite the cold setting in.
Out of the corner of his eye, Munro spotted something shiny amidst the driftwood and sand.
“I saw the bottle through the branches and seaweed brought in by the tide,” Munro told the Bay of Plenty Times this week.
Munro, who had often found discarded items at Quebec’s riverside beaches, picked up the transparent bottle and was surprised to find there was paper inside.
“I was astonished to see the message and the first bit of writing that was visible was the year: 2014.”
It was a letter from Jim Green of Whangamatā, dated 2014. The letter talked a little about Green’s life and family and explained the bottle was a time capsule.
“It’s hard to believe I could come across something so outrageous,” Munro said.
“I had to find the person who sent the message and tell him that his bottle had been found so far away. If I were in his shoes, I’d want to know.”
“He told me he had found the message’s author and that Jim Green seemed really nice.”
From there, Munro took matters into his own hands.
“It really mattered to me. I absolutely had to do some research.”
After failing to contact Green on social media Munro wrote to the Bay of Plenty Times.
“When you take two minutes to think about it, this story is incredible,” Munro said.
“New Zealand is so far away and until two weeks ago this little bottle was wandering the seas. Then I, also a small thing in this big world, I picked it up with my own hands.”
Munro said he felt compelled to do something about what he had found.
“This bottle had a very real history and the person responsible for this message had to know, deserved to know one way or another, where it had ended up.
“Perhaps he will laugh when he hears this story.”
Now, after weeks of searching, Munro was delighted to receive Green’s contact details.
“Well, well, well. I’ll go eat my hat,” he said when told the news.
“You’ve made my year.”
Green, a self-described fanatic of history, has been making and distributing his “time capsules” for about 20 years.
“It’s just something I do so that when I do eventually pass away, I’ll have left a message for someone to find,” Green said.
“I really don’t know how many there are but there must be at least a hundred.”
Green said he had left letters from 2014 all over the world, from Darwin in Australia to Hadrian’s Wall in the United Kingdom.
“The only place I haven’t left one is the Colosseum.”
But until now, Green said only one other person had contacted him about finding a time capsule.
“Once, a lady up in Russell found one of my time capsules washed up on shore. No one else has got in touch.”
Green said he had no idea where the bottle Munro found in Quebec had come from.
Green has not been to Quebec but he and his wife visited Vancouver in 2019 and had been on a cruise that stopped along Canada’s east coast earlier this year.
“I left a few time capsules in Halifax, Sydney, Peggy’s Cove and all the ports in Nova Scotia.”
“I’m hoping for exactly what this chap in Quebec has done. I hope whoever finds them has a chuckle to themselves and says ‘Wow’.”
Green said he was looking forward to having a conversation with Munro, though neither could speak the other’s language fluently.
“You tell him I love French. I love all foreign languages.”
Green said it would be interesting if his letters made it to a museum one day but the most important thing was to connect with people.
“I want the bottles to build bridges.”
-By Maryana Garcia
