When Rick Marcotte picked up his mail a couple weeks ago and found a letter address to his father, who passed away in 1983, he though there had been a mistake. Then he turned the letter over and saw the date of the announcement he realized their was no mistake, rather the letter had been sent in 1974 when his father was still alive with no explanation as to where the letter had been for the past 32 years.
Complete with a 6 cent stamp the letter was sent from the Squamish Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion informing Marcotte's father Eric Marcotte, a World War Two veteran, when and where poppies sales would be taking place and what time the parade and Remembrance Day service would take place on November 11, 1974.
Marcotte, who maintains the same box number in the Garibaldi Highlands Post Office as his father did, received the letter June 14.
"I just couldn't believe it," he said. "My father use to sell poppies and this was a reminder for him of the events of 1974. It was sent from the local legion so it has taken 32 years for the letter to go a block!"
Without seeing the letter, Colleen Frick a media representative for Canada Post could give little explanation as to why the letter would take so long to reach the late Eric Marcotte.
"We are curious about this letter too," she said. "It is very exciting he received this on his dad's behalf. It looks like this valuable piece of mail is getting a second chance."
Frick suggested the letter might not have been mailed in 1974 or might have been mis-delivered and someone who received it may have only mailed it recently. She said the fact the letter has a 6-cent stamp says it had to have gone through a manual sorter, such as the offices in Squamish, because a machine sorter, such as the one in Vancouver where Squamish mail is sent for out of town sorting, would have rejected it for having incorrect postage.
Sandy Seright is the office assistant at the local Royal Canadian Legion branch 277 and is the person in charge of sending the mail. She said she hadn't seen the letter until Marcotte had shown it to her.
"When I first saw it I thought wow!" she said. "I definitely didn't send the letter, if I had found a letter that old I would have definitely remembered sending it."
Regardless of where the letter has been for the past 32 years, Marcotte plans to keep it as a memento of his father who died in 1982 at the age of 60 from a heart attack.
"It took a while to get here so it is pretty special and I am going to hold on to it," he said.
