Canada (BN24) – A message in a bottle tossed into the Atlantic Ocean by a Canadian couple more than a decade ago has been discovered nearly 2,000 miles away on an Irish beach, in what they describe as a testament to endurance and connection.
Brad and Anita Squires, who were dating at the time, dropped the bottle from the cliffs of Bell Island, off Newfoundland, in 2012. Inside was a note chronicling their day together:
“Anita and Brad’s day trip to Bell Island,” it read. “Today, we enjoyed dinner, this bottle of wine and each other, at the edge of the island.” The note included a phone number and an invitation: “Please call us.”
“I gave it everything I had,” Brad Squires recalled this week in an interview with The Canadian Press. “We didn’t even see it hit the water—it was too high up. I just assumed it smashed on the rocks.”
Instead, the bottle survived 13 years of storms and currents, crossing the Atlantic Ocean before washing up Monday on Scraggane Bay, along Ireland’s southwest Maharees Peninsula.
Kate and Jon Gay were walking the beach when they spotted it.
“Really? A message in a bottle? Really? Wow!” Kate Gay wrote in an email to CBS News. She and her husband decided to wait until that evening to open it.
Gay is a community partner with the Maharees Conservation Association, which works on strengthening coastal resilience and community engagement. She said the discovery felt symbolic.
“That bottle had survived so many storms that have caused damage, erosion and flooding in Maharees,” she said. “Yet it arrived on our beach that day, a little weathered but holding strong.”
She brought the bottle to a project meeting that night to share the moment with the group.
“It was a fun way to start the meeting,” she said. “And I wasn’t wrong—within an hour of posting it online, it felt like we’d let a genie out of that bottle.”
Photos of the bottle and note quickly spread on social media. The Maharees Conservation Association posted on Facebook:
“Such a long way to travel and such a long time to get here but we got it! Now if only Anita and Brad would just answer the phone they told us to call them on!!!”
The couple, who are now married with three children in Newfoundland, soon saw the post and reached out to confirm they were indeed the authors of the note.
“Anita and I both feel like we have new friends, and we’re all equally amazed,” Brad Squires said.
The discovery comes ahead of the Squires’ 10th wedding anniversary next year, which coincides with the conservation group’s own 10-year milestone.
“It’s such a romantic story—and it has brought joy to so many,” Kate Gay said. “The ‘message in a bottle’ has gone from being a time capsule of a happy moment on Bell Island to a metaphor for resilience and the ripple effect of positive actions and connections.”
cbsnews
