Just a name and a place: Islander finds note in a bottle on P.E.I.'s South Shore

A Charlottetown woman was out for a walk along the shore in Point Prim, P.E.I. Sunday when she came across a washed up champagne bottle with a note she believes travelled all the way from Nova Scotia.

Jen Bogart was with her dog when she discovered the bottle, held it up to the light, and noticed there was a note inside. 

"It was really neat because it was sealed and completely intact, I knew that it had travelled a distance and had been in the ocean for quite some time, so I knew that there was something inside that was pretty exciting," Bogart said. 

"I thought, 'How romantic!' I thought, this is such a cool story. You hear movies and different stories and how romantic these notes are. Maybe there's a hidden fortune, or someone's lost cousin or something. You never know."

A note with a name

She took the bottle home where she carefully took the note out with tweezers. The note appears to be on a time sheet from Halifax Metal Workers Limited. There's no year on the sheet.

On the back of the note, in faint writing, is a handwritten name and a location: Ivan P. Langille, Boutiliers Point, N.S.

She started searching for the man online, and came upon an obituary for a Blockhouse, N.S. man by the same name. He died in 2016 at the age of 99. She believes that he's the same Langille who wrote the note and sent the bottle out into the ocean.

The obituary listed a daughter: Yvonne Wilkie. Bogart took to Facebook in an effort to find her. Within hours, she had Wilkie's phone number, and was eager to tell her about her discovery.

A surprising call

"I was really nervous at first," Bogart said.

"She was a little taken aback because here I am this girl from Charlottetown calling her. She's in a little community in Lunenburg county, and so I knew that there was going to be some explaining for me to do," she said, adding that it was certainly a surprise for Wilkie.

"She seemed really thrilled and she said that her father had lived a really long beautiful life, and that he would do playful things just like this."

Wilkie, who lives in Blockhouse, Nova Scotia, said she's thankful to Bogart for contacting her and telling her about the bottle.

"I was really surprised. I mean, he did a lot of travelling around, but I didn't realize that he would have done that," Wilkie said.

Though Wilkie says it's unclear why Boutiliers Point was the location listed on the note, since her father also lived in Blockhouse, she explained that her father liked to camp often and travel around the province, so that could be the reason for it.

As for the Halifax Metal Workers time sheet, Wilkie said her father did not work for them, but that he did have a junkyard when he was alive and that he used to take a lot of metal to the city to sell it.

An 'awesome' experience

Bogart plans on mailing the bottle and note to Wilkie sometime this week, who says she'll share it with her brother and the rest of her family.

For Bogart, it's been an "awesome" experience. 

"Not only was it unexpected, like on my end, but also for this lady," Bogart said.

"And I'm so close to my father that I understand that this would be very special for someone so I want her to share it with her family and her brother and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren for sure. Just to see even his handwriting alone is pretty special."

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