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Searching for Jessie: after 4 years, Yellowknifer's bottled message lands in PEI

An environmental clean-up crew in P.E.I. are trying to track down a 13-year-old from Yellowknife, whose message in a bottle they found during a river clean up four years after it was launched from a beach in New Brunswick.
Trail's End · CBC News ·
A child named Jessie, from Yellowknife launched this message in a bottle from New Brunswick four years ago. Now the people who found it want to get in touch. (Submitted by Tracy Brown)

A mysterious message in a bottle, retrieved during the clean-up of a stream bed in Prince Edward Island, has a Yellowknife connection.

The environmental technicians who found it are now working all their contacts in the Northwest Territories, as well as reaching out on Facebook, to find the now 13-year-old child who wrote the note.  

"I am visiting from Yellowknife to New Brunswick, to visit my wonderful cousins," the note begins.

It's dated November 11, 2011 and the writer, Jessie, was nine years old at the time.

Bottle perfectly intact

The green wine bottle was found by David Allen, a Field Supervisor for the Bedeque Bay Environmental Monitoring Association, who brought it to his executive director Tracy Brown.
The bottle was found more than 400 kilometres from where it was launched, but likely travelled twice that distance on the ebb and flow of tides and currents (Submitted by Tracy Brown )

"it was perfectly intact despite being bumped around by tides and currents," said Brown.  

According to Brown, the bottle still had the it label on it, and "whoever corked it did a good job. The letter was dry after making it across Northumberland Strait."

Brown says the bottle, launched from a New Brunswick beach, travelled 405 kilometres to Prince Edward Island's Dunk River in the last four years.

Add in the ebb and flow of tides and currents, and Brown says it probably covered twice that distance.  

Before they send it back from whence it came, as per the writer's instructions, Allen says they want to find out as much as they can about the author.

Based on the letter, they are unsure whether it was written by a boy or a girl.

What is clear, however, is that the writer is part of a big family (three brothers and two sisters), is a huge fan of the Vancouver Canucks, and doesn't want anyone to get the wrong impression about what happened to the bottle's original contents.

"I did not drink the wine from the bottle," is clearly printed as a postscript.

The story of the bottle and the search for Jessie has already fanned out on Facebook across the Northwest Territories.

So Jessie, if you're out there, let us know.  

Or, if you know a Jessie in Yellowknife who could be the author, contact cbcnorth@cbc.ca or message us on Facebook at CBC NWT.  

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