Magdalen Island bottles: “After a big storm, it’s fun to go searching”.
Messages in bottles became the hobby of Jean-Guy Poirier who now has 104 in his collection.
It all began in 2004 during a walk on one of the beaches on the Madgalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
“After I found the first one, I said, ‘Wow, these exist? Messages in a bottle?”
“After I found the first one, I said, ‘Wow, these exist? Messages in a bottle?’” Poirier told Radio-Canada in a recent interview.
“I found one. Then two. Then three. I became a sort of collector.”
Poirier travelled the islands’ beaches by foot and on his ATV, recovering messages from across the province of Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and around the world.
Most of the messages were written by people vacationing in the nearby Gaspé region of Quebec, or Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
But he has also discovered bottles from the distant shores of Norway and islands in the Caribbean.
“After a big storm, it’s fun to go searching”
Poirier says the beaches on the Madgalen Islands northern shores are the best for finding bottles with messages.
“After a big storm, it’s fun to go searching,” he explained. “But if you’re looking, you won’t find one. It’s only when you’re not looking that you find one.”
Most bottles were recently launched, but not all. “I found one that was in the water for 40 years,” Poirier said.
