A New Brunswick man has been reunited with some family heirlooms after they were swept from his flooded home and ended up in a neighbour’s yard.
While trying to protect her Grand Bay-Westfield, N.B. home from incoming waters, Lisa Sanderson found several pictures amongst the debris, but didn’t recognize anyone in the images.
“(The pictures) all kind of washed up in one clump and then as they were drying we just pulled them apart (to) have them dry,” she told CTV Atlantic.
Determined to find the pictures’ rightful owner, Sanderson asked her neighbour Tim Humphrey if he recognized anyone in the images and it turned out the collection belonged to him.
Humphrey had no idea the pictures had gone missing. They were being stored in a plastic bin on a top shelf in his basement and the container must have been knocked over by some waves, he says.
Some of the images have a special sentimental value as they feature Humphrey’s mother, who died a few years ago following a battle with Parkinson’s disease.
“Those things you can't replace,” he said. “Anything else can be replaced.”
For Anderson, returning the photos to their rightful owner will hopefully bring some happiness to an otherwise dark time for her neighbour.
“His property has sustained quite a bit of damage, so I think anything that he gets back in one piece is good,” she said.
Water levels along the Saint John River continued to lower Thursday, but many homes along the waterway remain flooded.
With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Jonathan MacInnis
