When Doug Ring opened his mailbox to find a festive green envelope, he saw his name and that of his wife written clearly on the front.
But where the address usually follows, there were vague instructions on where the house may be.
“One block off McCallum, north on Busby,” was all the postman had to go on.
It was sent from a friend in Kamloops, Toby Eye. The two men worked together in the 1960s at the Sherritt Gordon mines in Manitoba. It had been more than 30 years since the old friends had seen each other, until this last summer when Eye came to visit Ring at his Abbotsford home.
“We were there for the first time, but I lost the address,” Eye explained from his home in Kamloops.
“I thought I would just try something, and have my return address written if it didn’t get there.”
This December was the first in years that Eye decided to send out Christmas cards, 14 in total. Ring’s was the only “goofy one,” he added.
But last week it arrived, much to Ring’s surprise. He wanted to thank the postie who went the extra mile.
“We called the post office, trying to track down the person who may have delivered it, but they couldn’t. I don’t know how they delivered it.”