The letter that took 45 years to arrive

When Anne Tingle leafed through her mail, one letter stood out. 

It was wrapped in Canada Post tape and, strangely, had only a six-cent stamp on it. The address had the name right, but little else. The envelope had an address similar to one that Anne hadn't lived at for quite some time.

It was then that she opened it that she realized it was a thank-you note from her sister…written and mailed in 1969.

Her young sister, Esther Stringam, eight years old at the time, had visited Anne in Calgary to help babysit the new baby.

"Here it was fresh in my mailbox many decades later," said Tingle. 

The letter began as a poem:

Dear Anne and Richard,

This is just a little note,

To tell you I will vote,

For your house and you,

And little Bryce too,

For if you want a lovely visit,

You'll have to go to Tingle's Inn.

"Little Bryce now, of course, is 48, so this was a bit of a shock to me," laughs Tingle.

"It's actually kind of a cherished memory for me, because that happens to be my only attempt at poetry," adds Stringam.  "So, I'm just really thrilled that even though it doesn't really rhyme or make a whole lot of sense, it's immortalized."

The letter came with a note from Canada Post that read, in part: "Dear Customer, we sincerely regret that your mail item is damaged. It was found in this condition in the mail stream. We realize your mail is important to you and we are always concerned when mail entrusted to our care is damaged." 

Tingle said she has no idea how the letter got lost and how it finally reached her. The letter was stamped many times with "Returned For Better Direction."

"How they got from that old address to my current one, I have no idea, but I'm in awe," laughed Tingle.