A deep-water dive has led to a unique connection, half the world away, for a group of Calgary divers.
Nearly a year ago to the day the diving team was exploring the depths of the Kurwa Cave at Windermere Wells in Windermere, B.C. when they happened upon an unlikely discovery — a GoPro camera that was still in working condition.
They brought it home, popped the memory card into a computer and found dozens of photos of two young mens’ adventures in Canada.
What followed was a year-long search for the owners of the camera.
Just two days ago, Charlene Barker received a message from a young man named Maxine Alibert all the way from France, saying the camera belonged to his friend Louis Toubeau.
“He was very shocked that someone had actually found his camera,” Barker told Global News on Wednesday.
She took the necessary precautions to make sure the message wasn’t from a scammer, including asking questions about what might be in photos on the SD card, asking for hints on where he was when the camera was lost and even FaceTiming with his sister in Paris.
“Being that it was a year later I kind of was a little hesitant, going… uhh is this a scam or is this real?”
She quickly confirmed that Maxine wasn’t a scammer and that his friend had scrimped and saved for the camera ahead of a trip to Canada to visit his sister who had been living and working here.
The camera and all its precious memories slipped off his head when he was cliff jumping in Windermere. He told Barker and his friend spent hours trying to find the camera but had no luck.
Barker said she isn’t surprised they couldn’t find it, as Kurwa Cave is staggeringly deep at 54 metres — a depth not many divers in Calgary are skilled enough to reach.
She said the entire diving group was elated to learn they’d finally found the camera’s owner.
“It was probably about 20 or 30 people yesterday that were very excited and buzzing about this camera and how amazing… they’re all the way in France, we don’t know any of them, and we ended up being connected halfway across the world,” she said.
She said they’ve found about six cameras in Windermere Wells and five of them weren’t functioning, making this one a special find.
Barker plans to send the camera and the card across the pond next week.