Message in a bottle found on Manitoulin Island brings strangers together

An Oshawa family is in disbelief after they found a message in a bottle while in Manitoulin Island. The message was a sombre one, found by Oshawa woman Shandelle Carrigan while they were visiting their family cottage.

“I don’t know. I think it was just the excitement of what was going to be inside this bottle,” said Carrigan.

“Once I picked it up, I could see the electrical tape wound around the neck of it and I could tell there was something in it. This was before I flipped it over and saw a picture.”

It happened while her family was on the island in April, when she found a bottle washed up on the shore. But what came after they opened the mystery bottle was a flurry of emotions.

Carrigan’s husband, Jason Poulton, says it was something much more than just a message.

“When we got the bottle open and we realized what it was, that switches the mood a little bit, because it’s quite impactful,” he said.

Inside was a photo, $10 and a poem about a young man who died in 2016. The note said, “Have a drink on us in memory of our son.”

“This became something so big and so powerful,” says Carrigan. “And it just had a huge message behind it.”

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“When we saw that, and the $10 bill, both of us kind of felt compelled to locate the family,” said Poulton.

What’s behind the message is the memory of Brandon Walli, who was struck and killed by a car in Flamborough, Ont. This happened while his family says he was texting and walking. After the tribute was discovered, Carrigan and her husband set out to find his family on Facebook and after 24 hours, they did.

“We wanted to say, yeah, we found your bottle and we will definitely have a drink,” they said.

After posting a impassioned message about their find on a local Facebook page for the island, word spread fast.

“It was shared so much, Robyn had contacted Shan within 24 hours, and that evening we all sat on Facetime and had a shot in memory of Brandon altogether.”

It was an emotional time for his family as well, who had almost forgotten they threw the bottle into Lake Huron.

“All those emotions from that night that Brandon had passed all came kind of flooding back,” says his sister, Robyn Tollar.

Brandon’s family had thrown it in the water, after they loaded his ashes into shotgun shells and shot them off into the lake on Manitoulin Island. The bottle could have floated across the water to the United States, but instead it just happened to float back to the house, right beside them.

“I had no idea where that bottle was going to go,” said Tollar. Their father, Tom Walli agreed.

“We watched it float out, so I have no idea how it came back,” says Walli.

And the return of that message has reinvigorated their desire to continue bringing awareness to the dangers of texting and walking — the very way that Brandon was unfortunately killed.

When he passed, Tom’s employer, Geotab, helped him start up a campaign called Phones Down, Eyes Up, an initiative to raise funds through benefit concerts and offers scholarships for students.

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“We really made it our mission as a family to drive awareness to this and spread the word,” says Tollar. “Because if we can save one person, it’s worth it.”

With the bottle found, the family’s sense of purpose has been rejuvenated.

“I’m hoping that we can make this worldwide.”