All photos © Agathebernardphotography
OCEAN CHRONICLES Message in a Plastic Bottle: Cleaning Beaches on the Island’s West Coast DAV E FLAWSE IN 2012, A TEENAGER scribbled a note on a page of
couldn’t believe it had been found after all this time.
lined paper and signed her name with a heart. She
Ignace remembers the moment because a CBC televi-
rolled up the paper, slipped it inside a plastic bottle,
sion crew happened to be there at the time to capture
and secured the lid. From her father’s beach house
the entire event—it got him on national news.
in Grayland, Washington, near Seattle, she tossed the bottle into the ocean.
The Hesquiaht Nation member has been involved
Nine years later, and after a northbound odyssey up
was cleaning washed-up debris from the Zim Kings-
Puget sound, out the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and who
ton, the shipping vessel that lost containers and later
knows where else, Jeff Ignace came across the bot-
caught fire off the Island in fall 2021.
tle on a remote Vancouver Island beach. He held the scratched bottle up to the light and called to the other beach cleaning crew members. They gathered around as he uncorked the lid. Ignace deciphered a phone number on the water-soaked note, and with only a
in beach clean ups since 2017. His most recent stint
Like a log jutting into a river, the Hesquiaht Peninsula sticks out into the Pacific and catches debris caught in the currents. Ignace recently found and took home half a dozen expensive high-quality coolers and some
small amount of service, decided to call.
gym mats from the containers. The latter will be repur-
On the other end, the now 26-year-old woman and
for the coolers, Ignace says, “business has been good.”
posed for use in a nearby outdoor education school. As
mother of two hadn’t forgotten about the bottle and 1 0 | C O M PA S S M A G A Z I N E | I s s u e 3 9
W W W. C O M PA S S M A G A Z I N E . C A
