Kristine Brownscombe has walked the shoreline of the Fraser River for years.
She’s always on the lookout for the next little treasure, even foraging for mushrooms along the way.
On Sunday, May 3, 2025, about an hour south of Prince George, Brownscombe found a little something she thought would just be another thing to recycle.
“Something caught my eye and it was a bottle,” she said.
“It’s an old bottle. I thought it might’ve come out of somebody’s boat. So I thought I would just pick up the garbage and then ‘oh, it has something in it.’ And it’s sealed. This bottle is sealed with a metal cap.”
The person must’ve had a metal cap sealer and resealed the bottle after inserting the piece of paper in it that shows no signs of moisture damage at all, Brownscombe added.
“I Google Lensed it and it said they quit using that type of sealer in the 80s and went to plastic caps,” she said.
It’s a green bottle and the aluminum cap has those little tabs still intact.
There are two letters on the top of the cap.
“And given the calligraphy style it could be a M and an N or a W and an N,” Brownscombe said.
The kicker is that because it was sealed so well Brownscombe said she has decided not to open the bottle.
“It’s driving my kids crazy but no, I am not opening it,” she laughed. “I want to return it to the sender and if I find them and they want me to throw it back in the river, I will.”
Brownscombe said she had a good look at it and could see that it’s a sketch with no words visible.
“From the outside I can see a bit of artwork,” Brownscombe said.
“It’s a pencil sketch. I’ve flipped it around a million different ways and I can kind of see up into the coil of paper and I don’t see anywhere that there looks to be a date or a name or anything. It’s just a hand-drawn picture inside the bottle. I would love to see the person get it back and open it back up. I want the sender to get it back. I just want them to know that their art project is still alive.”
When she posted her discovery on social media she did get some responses that claimed it might be their bottle but once the details about a bottle cap sealer being used was shared, they were all dead ends.
“So now it just sits on my counter waiting for someone to say ‘hey, that’s mine and I did this, that and the other thing,’” Brownscombe said.
“And that would be really cool to see that and like I said, if they’d like me to put it back in the water, I will put it back in the water and if they want it back they can have it. It was just a super-cool find.”
If you've got some intel reach out to Kristine Brownscombe on Facebook.
