Message in a bottle found 26 years later in Ontario lake

A message in a bottle tossed into an Ontario lake as part of a school project was found by a student at the same school 26 years later.

Makenzie Van Eyk was a fourth grade student at St. John the Baptist Catholic Elementary School in Belle River when she and her classmates threw messages in bottles into Lake St. Clair.

River Vandenberg, a current kindergarten student at the school, found the bottle while visiting the beach with his grandmother.

“This letter is coming from Makenzie Morris and I go to St John the Baptist School. I am in Grade 4 in Mr. St. Pierre’s class,” the message reads. “My letter is about water in the Great Lakes. We read a book called Paddle-to-the-Sea. It was a very good book.”

Vandenberg took the message in a bottle to his school, where a fourth grade teacher read it to a class that includes Van Eyk’s daughter, Scarlet.

“My mouth completely dropped. And everyone was like, ‘Who’s that? Who’s that?’ And I was like, ‘My mother,'” Scarlet Van Eyk said

Makenzie Van Eyk said she occasionally thought about the message in a bottle over the years and wondered what happened to it.

“It was memorable to do something like that, throw something and think maybe someone will find it later,” she said.

Roland St. Pierre, the now-retired teacher who came up with the message in a bottle assignment in 1998, said it was “emotional” to hear that one of the bottles had been found after so many years.