SASKATOON -- Postcards from 1964 sent between two young lovers were returned to them this past Valentine’s Day, after they were recently discovered in the walls of a Nova Scotia house during a renovation.
The collection of weathered postcards feature landmarks in Newfoundland, including the William Carson Ferry which took people between the province and Nova Scotia for decades. The postcards don’t have much written on them, except for the phrase: “All my love, Mary XOXO.”
“And I thought that was absolutely sweet… and it just so happened to work out that it was on Valentine’s Day,” Angela Hartley told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
She and her husband have been living in the house in East Jordan, N.S., for more than 25 years and began finding things when they ripped down the walls in the bathroom during a recent renovationation.
“I was tearing apart the wall near the window, and I saw a skate, and I hollered to my husband ‘there’s something in the wall!” she told CTVNews.ca. Along with the skate, she found other knickknacks and small toys.
“So I continued to tear stuff out and then I noticed a [group of] postcards with pictures of Newfoundland on it,” Hartley said, noting the dates on the postcards put them at around 57-years-old.
It quickly dawned on her that the “Mary” in the postcards was her neighbour who lived several minutes away.
“I felt those had to go to their original owner. I mean it’s a piece of their history of them obviously at the beginning stages of their relationship," she said.
Mary Fredericks was only 17 when she sent those postcards to a boy she had a crush on. When she received them back she was shocked.
“It was just so long ago and I didn’t even remember that I had sent them. Then I saw the handwriting and I thought ‘that is definitely me,’” she told CTVNews.ca during a joint video interview with her husband, Malcolm.
The postcards had been sent in summer of 1964 when Fredericks, a long-time Nova Scotia resident, had been visiting family in Newfoundland with her father and brother.
“We’d just started dating and I thought I’d just send him some postcards, you know, as a souvenir sorta thing,” Fredericks explained, saying she actually wasn’t prone to sending postcards to anyone, which makes the find that much rarer.
“We’d just met and I just wanted to make sure we kept in contact and I didn’t want to lose ‘em,” she chuckled. “I think it was love at first sight. I had a boyfriend at the time but I dropped him for him,” she said, tilting her head towards her now long-time husband.
The couple were married in 1968 and haven’t been able to keep their eyes off each other since, celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in 2018.
Side-by-side photos of Mary and Malcolm Fredericks during their wedding and 50th anniversary in 2018 (Courtesy of Mary Fredericks)
Fredericks, a telephone operator, and her husband, a career truck driver, also went onto have three children together and eight grandchildren.
Candice Porter, Fredericks’ oldest daughter, had heard of her mother visiting family in Newfoundland and Labrador but didn’t know about the postcards. Upon hearing that her parents had been reacquainted with the decades-old postcards, she said: “I was totally blown away by it.”
As for what she plans on doing with the postcards, Fredericks said, “I think they’re a very good keepsake. I’m certainly going to hold onto them.”
When asked if the renovations would lead to more hidden treasures, Hartley laughed saying it’s certainly possible since she had two rooms left to fix up.
“It would be awesome to find more momentos like that. You can't replace that-- it’s not worth a cent to anybody but to the owners.”
