What if you threw a message in a bottle into the ocean… and someone on the other side of the world wrote back?
That’s exactly what Harold “The Bottle Man” Hackett of Tignish did.
Beginning in 1996, Harold tossed thousands of bottles into the waters off North Cape, each containing a simple note inviting whoever found it to write back.
Over the next 22 years, he released more than 10,000 bottles.
And people responded.
By 2018, more than 4,800 people had written back after finding one of Harold’s bottles on beaches, in fishing grounds, and along coastlines far from Prince Edward Island.
His bottles connected him with people from New Brunswick, North Carolina, England, Holland, Portugal, and many other places around the world. Some became lifelong friends. One woman from England exchanged letters with Harold for nearly 20 years, often mailing them in unusual containers like watering cans, piñatas, and Easter bunnies.
When Harold threw his final bottle into the sea in 2018, he estimated that thousands more were still drifting somewhere in the world’s oceans, waiting to be discovered.
Harold has since passed away, but around Tignish he is still fondly remembered as “The Bottle Man”—the Island fisherman who turned a simple message in a bottle into friendships that spanned the globe.