Letters were enough to keep two women’s friendship afloat even when an ocean separated them.
“It was like your best friend, as if you sit down and have a big, long conversation, you know,” said Jacquie Bonkowski, who until one year ago lived in Manitoba.
Bonkowski was 11 years old when she placed a pen pal wanted ad in the Western Producer. She received the expected Canadian responses, but a letter from a young girl in Northern Ireland caught her eye.
“The first one she just wrote, ‘Hi, my name is Sandra’ and telling me where she lived and how she got the paper and a little bit about herself,” said Bonkowski.
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Sandra McIntyre’s father was sent the Western Producer by a Canadian cousin in Manitoba. A chance perusal meant the creation of a lifelong friendship for Bonkowski and McIntyre.
“We used to write fairly often when we were younger and then as we got older, it would be like a couple times a year, but they were very thick letters,” said Bonkowski.
Over the years, handwritten letters turned to e-mails. There was always a dream of meeting face-to-face, said Bonkowski, but with three children she did not think it would be possible.
“I didn’t think it would happen while our children are still young. I never thought from Canada that I’d ever be able to take the whole family.”
After 31 years and countless letters, the chance arrived. Bonkowski’s husband, an administrative clerk with the Canadian Army, was stationed in Germany in 2004. Bonkowski knew it was her chance to meet her pen pal.
“So then it became more of a reality,” she said. “That was just one of the things I was going to do. There was no two ways about it.”
On Oct. 18, 2005, a year after Bonkowski moved to Geilenkirchen, Germany, she made the trip to Belfast to meet her pen pal.
“I was a bit apprehensive; 31 years is a long time. But I needn’t have worried. We got on instantly,” said McIntyre via e-mail from her Irish home.
“It didn’t really matter what she looked like or what her house looked like, I just thought this is a person who knew how I thought. So I wasn’t nervous, I was more excited.”
The initial seconds after McIntyre opened the door were filled with a hesitant pause. Then, Bonkowski said, they hugged and cried.
“We just kept looking at each other because we couldn’t believe we were actually physically in the same room,” said Bonkowski with a laugh.
The conversation flowed as easily as a pen to paper, she said. The friends spent time reminiscing over letters and gifts sent through the post for more than three decades.
The letters talked in detail about finishing high school, getting married and having children. Bonkowski especially remembers feeling a heightened sense of Canadian nationalism after reading some of the earlier correspondence.
McIntyre would write to her pen pal with stories of bomb threats and turmoil from her then-troubled country. Bonkowski said she was honoured to be trusted with such intimate details.
Bonkowski added: “When you live in a small environment, a limited world, you know, it lets you see the world through somebody else’s eyes.”
The pen pal tradition might carry on between the families. Bonkowski said their children are similar ages and are being encouraged to write to each other.
Bonkowski said McIntyre is planning a trip to Germany sometime over the next three years. It will be their last chance to visit before Bonkowski returns to Canada.
Corresponding with a foreign pen pal is the opportunity to learn about a different culture and country, Bonkowski said. She added pen pals should be diligent with their letter writing.
“So many people I knew had started off writing their pen pals and then they quit, and I think they’ve lost something, a wonderful opportunity.”
