HALIFAX — A wedding-day "message in a bottle" mystery has been solved — but it's not the happy ending many would have hoped.
Danita Sawler of Martin's Point, N.S., opened up a bottle her late father had found on a beach off Oak Island and found a tantalizing note inside.
Written on a paper doily and dated April 15, 2000, it read: "Frank and Judy were wed in the sight of God. If this is ever found please know that these two people are extremely happy in their faith and in each other."
Sawler said her father, Robert Hirtle, found the bottle sometime before he passed away in December 2001 at the age of 77, and she didn't open up the bottle until recently.
When she found the note, she became entranced by the romance and embarked on a mission to find the "newlyweds."
After her story was told by Global News and Frank was found, the unromantic truth was revealed: Frank and Judy are no longer together.
"That's long in the past and I'd rather not dig that up," said Frank, a Nova Scotian who asked that his last name not be used.
Frank says the couple was indeed married on April 15, 2000, and stayed at the Oak Island hotel now known as the Atlantica Oak Island Resort and Conference Centre. They wrote the note that evening and sent the bottle out into the water.
"I guess the bottle didn't go very far," he said.
The couple went their separate ways in 2010 and Frank says he'd rather not have the bottle returned or rehash the past.
He did, however, say the sentiments of that note were very real.
"It was true at the time," he said.
