What would you do if you bought an antique cabinet and found all sorts of sentimental figurines inside a locked drawer?
Would you keep them, throw them out or try to find the previous owner?
TV hosts and designers Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan purchased an antique dresser from ReStore in Etobicoke for a refurbishing project they were working on.
“One of the drawers was open and one of them was locked and in the ReStore they said that’s what’s putting people from actually buying this piece,” Colin said.
The pair decided to purchase the dresser and brought it home to be refurbished, but when they began cleaning the cabinet they found the key that would unlock some special memories for an Ontario family.
“We started to clean it before painting it and underneath we found a key and the key was to this secret drawer which we opened and inside there were all manners of gorgeous bits and pieces,” Justin said.
“We found a couple of photographs, some stamps, an old penny from the 1930s, some banks cards … and all manner of things that really sparked our interest.”
Justin took a photo of all items and posted it to their social media page to see if the owner would be able to identify and retrieve the items.
“Suddenly, our army of followers became detectives.”
Soon after Colin and Justin posted the picture on Instagram, Christine Decaire received a message from a high school friend.
One of the pictures found in the cabinet was a grade eight graduation photo of her.
“My girlfriend from high school saw the original post on Instagram,” Decaire said.
“She sent me a message and I thought, wow I haven’t hear from this person in 10 years, and I read the message and she I think this is you and I think they are talking about your grandmother, check it out.”
The items belonged to Helen Hunt, Decaire’s grandmother, who is in her late 80s and is living with advanced stage Alzheimer’s disease.
“I was in complete shock,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure my grandmother had the [cabinet] since she was quite young. I think it was with her since she was a teenager and into university and it moved with her wherever she went.”
Colin and Justin gifted the cabinet and its contents to Decaire and her sister Rachel Goldenberg.
“Anything that belonged to them has a very special place in my heart,” Decaire said.
“My grandmother is still with us – not in the way that I would hope – but she is with us physically and sometimes has a glimmer of memory,” she said.
“Anything that we can show her that could reignite her memory is always a great thing.”
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