As It Happened: The Archive Edition - The Message Episode

When Dari Yates was 13-years-old, she wrote a message, put it in a bottle, and threw it in Alberta's Bow River. The imaginative teen hoped that someone would find that bottle and get in touch with her. That was in 1970.

In 2014, someone finally found that message in a bottle. And although Dari is now known as Darilyn Keene, and despite the fact that she'd moved to British Columbia, the man who found the bottle managed to track her down.

Jean-Francois Cianci was helping to clean up the shores of the Bow River in August 2014 when he found the bottle.

"I was done for the day and I was walking back to the parking lot, and as I was walking back I saw there were a few bottles that we had missed. So I started picking up and the second thing I saw was this glass bottle that had a message in it," says Cianci.

Keene had put her address on her message but had long since moved. Cianci was able to track her down after much sleuthing. He found newspaper articles citing her name in local archives dating back to the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Keene doesn't remember the day she threw the bottle in the river.

"I was one f those children who were forever burying things and throwing things in the river. I was an early polluter, I guess," says Keene with a laugh.

Keene and Cianci became quick friends.

"What an incredible amount of work he must have had to go through and I just think it's so amazing he took time out of a busy life and found me."

Hear that interview about the Message in a Bottle many more interviews about Messages on this episode of As it Happened.

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