A family in Canada is enjoying the delivery of an unexpected message from the past.

On Wednesday, Nov. 6, Makenzie Van Eyk told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) how she threw a message in a bottle into Lake St. Clair for a school assignment in 1998 and never thought about it again until her daughter discovered it 26 years later.

As a fourth-grade student at St. John the Baptist Catholic Elementary School in Belle River, Ontario, Van Eyk told the publication that her assignment was to write a letter about the Great Lakes’ water.

She then placed her message in a plastic bottle, tossed it into Lake St. Clair, and promptly forgot about it.

That was until River Vandenberg, a kindergartener currently enrolled in the same Ontario school, discovered the bottle on a jetty.

“There was no date on the letter, so I thought maybe [it was from] this year, maybe last year at most,” Vandenberg’s grandma told CBC. “We forwarded it to the school. His teacher called us later that day, stating that it was from 1998. “I was shocked.”

The instructor read the message and then decided to surprise Van Eyk’s daughter Scarlet, who happened to share a classroom with Vandenberg.

At the end of the school day, the instructor read aloud the letter, revealing the name scribbled on the paper 26 years previously.

Scarlet expressed her astonishment to CBC. “Everyone said, ‘Who’s that? Who is that? And I said, ‘My mother!'”

Van Eyk expressed her surprise upon discovering the letter and its extended preservation. She remembers penning the message and sealing it in the bottle with wax.

“I definitely wasn’t thinking about it often, so I was very surprised,” Van Eyk told the CBC.

“I think that process has truly stuck with me,” she said. This coincided with our school’s acquisition of a computer lab, which was one of the first things I ever printed on paper and had the opportunity to use. “It was memorable to do something like that, throw something, and think maybe someone will find it later.”

The concept originated from her own instructor, Roland St. Pierre, who told the outlet that he had “forgotten all about” the initiative until he received a call from the school about the recent discovery. He stated that it “was a real shock.”

The retired teacher described it as an “emotional” experience to learn that one of the bottles had weathered the test of time, adding, “For it to survive 26 years without breaking down, it’s kind of surprising.”