
Canadian couple's message in a bottle found in Ireland 13 years later
Anita Squires — who's now married to the man who threw that bottle from a Newfoundland cliff — told NBC News when she wrote the note placed inside the bottle, she figured it'd quickly be lost at sea.
Instead it traveled nearly 2,000 miles and wound up on Scraggane Bay on Ireland's Dingle Peninsula 4,600 days later. It was discovered there by Maharees Conservation Association workers cleaning up the bay's eroding beachfront. The organization's chairperson, Martha Farrell, was amazed by the resilience of the glass bottle as well as that of the couple responsible for setting it afloat.
She described its recovery as a 'moment of pure joy.'
The short note inside the bottle summed up the date Anita and her now-husband, Brad, were enjoying about a year into their courtship.
'Today we enjoyed dinner, this bottle of wine and each other on the edge of the island,' she wrote along with a phone number. 'If you find this, please call us.'
Farrell said her organization dialed the number, but got no reply. After searching for its author on Facebook, she got in touch with Anita.
'It was phenomenal,' Farrell said.
Anita and Brad Squires, who married in 2016, now have three children.
_____
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Forbes
3 hours ago
- Forbes
Can A Pool Cleaning Robot Really Eliminate Having To Vacuum Your Pool?
My family is fortunate enough to have an in-ground pool in our back yard. It was a project that started just as the pandemic hit and so the construction got dragged out for more than a year longer than expected (concrete shortages, no liners, work stoppages), but it was officially complete just in time for the 2022 swimming season to kick off. As a pool 'newbie' the two things that caught me off guard about owning one were the incredibly short swimming season (we live in Canada so we're lucky to get four months of use in a year), and the amount of work involved in vacuuming out the pool. Combine those two–wanting to make the most of every warm day and not enjoying the time required for maintenance–and I quickly jumped on the offer to test out a robotic pool vacuum. Over the past several years I've put a half dozen or so robotic pool cleaners through their paces. Many pool owners I've talked to ask me if a robotic pool cleaner is really capable enough to eliminate the chore of manually vacuuming a swimming pool. Day-To-Day Use Our back yard is surrounded by towering pines and an assortment of other trees, including a crabapple. There are birds flying around and a lot of debris that inevitably finds its way into the pool, including leaves, needles, cones, crabapples and bugs. Every morning, that means the bottom of the pool most definitely needs vacuuming. No-one wants to swim until that is cleaned. Manually vacuuming to waste (to avoid clogging the filter) was taking me a good 30-45 minutes from start to finish. Every day. It was a slog. And it was sending a lot of pool water down the driveway, which meant topping up the water level, which in turn meant more heating required and additional chemicals. With a good cordless robotic pool cleaner, this daily task is eliminated. I charge the robot over night, drop it in the pool when I get up, and two hours later I empty the robot's filter basket. The pool bottom looks pristine, there is no water waste and there is far less of an issue around topping up water levels or adjusting pool chemicals. On average, I spend maybe five minutes a day on maintenance. I've tested one cordless robot that also skims the pool surface! There Are Still Times When You Need To Manually Vacuum That being said, there are still times I have to break out the hose and equipment and manually vacuum the pool. The season opening? With the amount of sediment that has settled to the bottom of the pool over the winter, there is no way I would throw a robot in. That gunk needs to be fired out en masse and the water is being topped up anyway at this point. I also ran into a situation this year for the first time where there would be a bunch of very fine silt on the pool bottom and two hours after pulling the robot out, there would be more. I manually vacuumed, but it would still come back. Our pool guy was around working on the salt cell and I asked him about the silt and he pointed out that a house a few doors down was having a new driveway put in, with exposed dirt on the front lawn. Sure enough, when the pavement went in and the dirt was removed, the silt stopped its daily appearance in our pool. That being said, manually vacuuming was definitely more effective than the robot in this case, which brings me to my next point: limitations. Limitations I have found that even the best robotic pool cleaner can be defeated by fine silt, which can escape the mesh filter basket. Similarly, really big stuff can be a problem. Full-sized pine cones, for example, can fall under that umbrella. Battery life has never been an issue for me (in our modest 28 x 14 pool most robots manage at least 1.5 hours), but some chargers for cordless models can be large and you need to find a spot to plug in that is protected from the elements. Being underwater and exposed to chlorine, salt water and chemicals can take a toll on the mechanicals of a robot and exposure to summer sun has an impact on plastics. Shiny plastic shells start to fade by the end of the season and dials start to move less smoothly. After one robot worked flawlessly for a summer, but seized up so its wheels wouldn't even turn after a winter in the basement, I started to pay more attention to making sure to quickly rinse the machines off with the hose after use. Not All Robotic Pool Cleaners Are Equal In my time testing pool robots I have had some winners and some real clunkers. I take claims of AI pool bottom mapping with a grain of salt–after (too many) hours watching these things, I've only seen one that actually seems to approach the task methodically. However, with the battery life most have, even a completely random pattern almost always delivers a clean pool bottom. I've leaned that a good robotic pool cleaner can effectively climb walls to scrub the waterline. Others try, but just slide off. Surprisingly, I found some pool robots that have difficulty with stairs, getting stuck butting into the stairs endlessly and one that would hit the stairs and flip onto its back. Generally speaking, pool robots that use touch controls with LED status indicators can be frustrating, unless you use them in the evening when the sun doesn't wash out the display. I definitely prefer a dial setting so you aren't relying on an LED indicator. I'm also not a big fan of gimmicks. For example, solar charging as it's working? The battery life of any pool cleaner I've used is more than sufficient–I don't see the point of having a charge panel on the robot; it's just something to go wrong. Wi-Fi connectivity and apps can be useful, but I'm fine with just tossing the robot in and letting it do its thing. Look for a manufacturer that has been around for a while and, ideally, one that has a lineup of pool robots for different budgets and one that offers replacement parts. In particular, you want to be able to replace the filter basket in case it gets a tear. Batteries and scrubbers will also eventually need replacement. Here's a list of Forbes Vetted best models for 2025. Hate Pool Maintenance? Get A Robot… The bottom line is that investing in a pool robot does have a big payoff in terms of dramatically reducing the amount of time and effort spent in pool maintenance. It doesn't mean the end of manual vacuuming, but it makes that chore a several times a season exercise instead of something you need to do daily. There is a cost, but looking around these days, models like the Aiper Seagull Pro that performed flawlessly in testing several years ago can be had for around $500. Even if you only get two or three years out of the robot (and you may get more), that's only a few hundred dollars a year. I figure I've probably saved that much in water use, heating and chemicals compared to manually vacuuming our pool, so the hours of saved labor each week is a bonus.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
Windsor mom concerned autistic son could be locked in new green bin
Carole Vernon says her four-year-old son has been known to hide in small spaces. The Windsor, Ont., woman is concerned about his safety after her family had an organics green bin dropped off to her Riverside home last week. The 120-litre containers are hitting curbsides at 120,000 households over the next several weeks — in advance of compost collection starting in October. Roughly 2,000 bins are currently being dropped off each day. Kits are being sent to homes in Essex, Lakeshore, LaSalle, Tecumseh, and Windsor. The second phase of the program is set for Amherstburg, Kingsville and Leamington next year. "I noticed that [if] you turn the little switch to open it, it locks when it closes," said Vernon. "I've found him in cupboards in the kitchen, or in the hall closet sometimes. [It] was a bit of an alarm for me because if you have a refrigerator outside, they have you take the door off it … so that a child can't climb into it." Since the bins won't be used until October, Vernon says her family's bin is sitting upside down in her backyard — so the gravity lock won't engage. Vernon also says she has the container wedged between two things, making it more difficult to tip it right side up. "I don't think it's necessarily a design flaw to the point that it's got to be changed or something. I think it's more just awareness needs to be made, because if you don't realize it's possible, it's one of those things where you might not notice until it's too late." The gravity locks are meant to keep animals from snacking on the scraps. "Obviously, we can't have raccoons and rats just reaching in there and grabbing stuff out, so the lock has a purpose." According to Vernon, the new curbside program is a long time coming and "amazing" for the environment, to keep organic waste out of landfills. However, she says the bins need to come with clearly marked warning labels, highlighting the locks. She says having a child on the spectrum has opened her eyes to new dangers. "It's certainly not as dangerous as a swimming pool that doesn't have a fence around it, but it could lead to somebody being harmed if they don't know that it's a possibility." Emergency release mechanism Cathy Copot-Nepszy says she understands people assessing the risk of anything new that comes to their house. It's for that reason the manager of waste diversion at the Essex-Windsor Solid Waste Authority says the bin has a built-in emergency release mechanism on the inside of the lid. "If someone were to raise their lid, they'd be able to see that it's a metal portion that, if it's pushed in, it would release the lock and allow someone to open the lid," she said. WATCH | Green bins arriving on Windsor-Essex curbs. Here's what you need to know: According to Copot-Nepszy, it might make more sense for the Vernon family to remove the lock completely. "Definitely an isolated concern ... rare but legitimate. The locks are installed with a bunch of screws, so they could … be removed that way. I think in a special circumstance like this, we would even be willing to come out and assist if that's needed, because ultimately we do want people to use the bins." Roughly 1.5 million similar bins with locks are in use in Ontario, Copot-Nepszy says, in places such as Toronto, Peel Region, Peterborough and Brantford — with more on the way in Thunder Bay and Waterloo. "They've been successful for the majority of households, but in this case, maybe you have that rare instance that it's just not appropriate for that household."
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
From food scraps to fertilizer: 5 Newfoundland municipalities join new compost program
Five Newfoundland municipalities are providing a new solution for their residents' chicken bones and potato peels. The towns of Gander, Corner Brook, Pasadena, Conception Bay South, and Portugal Cove-St. Philip's have partnered with Food Cycle Science to cost-share a new technology called the FoodCycler, which diverts kitchen waste out of the dump. The Foodcycler is a small appliance that looks similar to an air fryer, but it turns table scraps into fertilizer. "Meat, dairy, bones, pits, shells and napkins, paper towels, coffee grinds. You throw it all into this bucket, then put it into the machine. When you press the button, it will run between six and eight hours or overnight," said Food Cycle Science's director of municipal programs, Christina Zardo. During its runtime, Zardo said, the machine will heat and grind the food waste. Once complete, there will be a small amount of fertilizer that can be used as a soil amendment or compost additive. "[It's] allowing you to take all the nutrients from your food waste and enrich your soils with it by putting it back into the earth, all within the confines of your own home," Zardo told CBC. The fertilizer created, Zardo added, will reduce landfill emissions that contribute to climate change. It's an efficient energy source, and she said it doesn't create a smell. "Depending on where you are on the grid, it usually costs between five and 10 cents a cycle," Zardo said. "The bucket is a really well-built aluminum bucket and has a filtered lid so it keeps all the fruit flies and smell away." Newfoundland and Labrador doesn't have an active compostable waste program in place. Zardo said the Foodcycler is a commercial product that is subsidized through its municipal programs. With the subsidy, its two models will cost residents between $200 and $300. "Food waste is yucky, it's stinky, it attracts animals, it fills up our garbage, it fills up our landfills. So whatever we can do to recirculate those nutrients back into our earth, we should do that," she said. Download our to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our . Click .