Love note in a bottle found years later, an ocean away

Victoria Craw 

It was September 2012 when Brad Squires and Anita Moran decided to cap off their impromptu romantic picnic on Canada’s Bell Island by flinging a bottle containing a handwritten note about their day together into the sea.

The young couple were around one year into their relationship but were living apart at the time, making that date particularly special to them, Anita told The Washington Post in a phone interview Friday. Brad was posted with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia, while she was training to be a nurse in Newfoundland and Labrador, she explained.

“We had this bottle and it just seemed kind of old-timey and romantic, I guess,” Anita said. “We wrote a private note to us, not thinking that it would make it anywhere.”

Nearly 13 years later, Kate and Jon Gay, who were walking on a beach in Ireland, nearly 2,000 miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, came across the bottle with the note inside.

They were walking on the Maharees - a stretch of coastline in western Ireland - when they found the bottle on Monday, Kate Gay told The Post in an email. She said they decided to save opening it for a meeting that evening with the Maharees Conservation Association and local artists for a project about resilience and climate adaptations for coastal communities.

“It seemed like a fun way to start the meeting,” she said, “and I wasn’t wrong! That bottle had survived so many storms that have caused damage, erosion and flooding in Maharees … yet it arrived on our beach that day, a little weathered but holding strong!”

Everyone was delighted, and intrigued by the note inside, which read: “Anita and Brad’s day trip to Bell Island. Today, we enjoyed dinner, this bottle of wine and each other, at the edge of the island. If you find this please call us,” followed by a phone number.

While the phone number did not work, the group raised a toast of nonalcoholic mojitos to Brad and Anita, and wished them the best.

Martha Farrell, co-founder of the MCA, then posted the news on the group’s Facebook page - sparking a viral detective hunt as people tried to track down the mysterious Brad and Anita, and wondered: Were the two still together?

At home in Portugal Cove-St Philips, Newfoundland, Anita said she was putting her son to bed when her and Brad’s phones started buzzing with messages. Within an hour, she was in touch with Farrell and able to confirm that she and Brad were indeed still together - in fact, they married in 2016 and have three children, and she has changed her surname to Squires.

Finding out the couple’s news “was like the perfect ending,” Farrell told The Post in a phone interview Friday.

She said it felt like “serendipity” for a member of the group to have found a bottle and a story that had traversed an ocean and linked two communities on either side of the Atlantic.

“It’s almost like a love letter to each other capturing that moment in time in their lives,” she said.

Gay said the response to the romantic story “has been phenomenal,” adding, “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.”

The conservation group has invited the couple to Ireland next year to celebrate its 10th anniversary, which coincides with the Squireses’ 10-year wedding anniversary. Anita, who is from Prince Edward Island, is also working to connect the Irish group to local Canadian initiatives.

“We were so surprised to hear that this had even happened and how big the story has become,” Anita said. “A private moment between Brad and I all those years ago now is reaching so far and so big, it’s hard to believe.”

As for what the Squires children think of their parents’ story, Anita said they were unfazed.

“We’ve always loved each other. We’ve always had a happy relationship, so I think they just think it’s kind of like a cute cherry on top,” she said.