Brad and Anita Squires cast a message out to sea on Bell Island in 2012 which was found Monday more than 3,000 kilometres away on a beach along the southwest coast of Ireland.Kate Gay/The Canadian Press
A romantic message in a bottle thrown from the cliffs of an island off Newfoundland nearly 13 years ago was found on a beach in Ireland this week – and the couple behind it are still in love.
Brad and Anita Squires had been dating for about a year when they decided to end a quiet September picnic on Bell Island in 2012 by casting a message out to sea.
“Today we enjoyed dinner, this bottle of wine and each other on the edge of the island,” Anita wrote on a piece of lined paper before stuffing it into the bottle. Brad stood up and hurled it into the waters of Conception Bay.
“I gave it everything I had,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “We didn’t see it hit the water, it was too high up … I just assumed it smashed on the rocks.”
It didn’t.
On Monday afternoon, more than 3,000 kilometres away, Kate and Jon Gay found the bottle on a beach on the Maharees peninsula along the southwest coast of Ireland. They broke it open that night with members of a local conservation group, who then posted about the letter on Facebook.
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In less than an hour, Martha Farrell with the Maharees Conservation Association was reading a text from Anita Squires confirming she and Brad were now married with three children.
“And then I said, ’Yay, love conquers all – and the Atlantic Ocean!’” Farrell said in an interview.
“It was unbelievable, because we didn’t know what had become of this very romantic couple,” she added. “Our project is about coastal resilience and climate adaptation. And we were wondering, is this love story, is this romance resilient? Would they still be together?”
Brad and Anita Squires were in a long-distance relationship when they had their picnic on Bell Island, which is about a 20-minute drive and a short ferry ride northwest of St. John’s. He was a young police officer posted in British Columbia and his future wife was training to be a nurse in Newfoundland.
They were married in 2016, and they have two teenagers and a young child.
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“We were young in love and now we’re older in love,” Brad Squires said Wednesday.
Farrell said the crowd at the Gays’ house made a toast to the Newfoundland couple after reading the letter. Later, across the Atlantic, Brad and Anita Squires toasted the group in Ireland as they shared text messages with Farrell.
“Anita and I both feel like we have new friends, and we’re all equally amazed,” Brad Squires said.
He and his wife will celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary next year. The Maharees Conservation Association, co-founded by Farrell in 2016, is also celebrating its 10th anniversary next year.
“I guess we have some people to visit and a trip to probably plan,” Squires said.
