Wendy Simon still remembers the first letter she sent to her pen pal in Australia about 57 years ago.
The Saint John, N.B., resident asked her new friend Wendy Mcilwraith if kangaroos frequented her back yard. The answer was no.
“The first picture she sent me, she’s holding a baby kangaroo,” Simon recalled.
Nearly six decades later, Simon and Mcilwraith finally met in person Thursday, sharing a tight embrace in the centre of the Saint John Airport.
To finally meet in person was “surreal,” said Simon, her arm wrapped around her oldest friend.
The pair became pen pals at the age of 10 after their schools offered a program to write letters to students in another country.
Mcilwraith can’t recall the first letter she wrote, but she knows, at the time, her knowledge of Canada was slim.
“From Australia, I guess it’s just somewhere on the other side of the world,” Mcilwraith said.
Without modern technology, the pair spent many hours writing letters, often forced to fill out the entire page.
“When I travelled to California with my parents, I mean it was from the minute I left the house to the minute I landed and got back to the house. I had every detail in that 17 pages of loose leaf on both sides,” Simon said.
Though it would take weeks to arrive, both the Wendys remember the excitement when new mail would arrive.
Their friendship stemmed deeper than just a shared first name. Similar interests and a habit to not take each other too seriously created a more profound bond between the two.
“We grew up together, basically,” explained Simon.
“It’s been comforting because she got me threw my parents death and other things that had happened. And she got divorced and lost a baby, so I tried what I could to console her. Just having somebody to talk to was a help.”
For a period of time, Mcilwraith became disconnected from her close friend due to frequent travelling.
Unwilling to lose her pen pal, she wrote a letter to Simon’s childhood home and before long received a response.
“That’s what friendship is isn’t it? If people are important in your life, then you just stay connected, and you just share your life with them,” remarked Mcilwraith.
Staying in Saint John for a few days, Mcilwraith has a few places she plans to visit and a longtime friend to serve as her tour guide.
However, Simon doesn’t expect to return the favour by travelling to Australia anytime soon.
“I told her I will be down when they build a bridge because I will not spend that much time on a plane.”
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