Pen pals for 43 years, a Singaporean and a Canadian had never met in person – till now

SINGAPORE – They began exchanging letters in 1983, when they were only 12 years old, and kept at it for 43 years.

Yet, even as they wrote to each other all those years, they had never met in person. Not until last week, when Ms Michelle Anne Ng, a Singaporean, flew to St John’s in Newfoundland, Canada, on Oct 17 to see an old friend, Ms Sonya Clarke Casey.

“We realised that visiting each other may no longer be a dream. We can make our sign-off dream ‘Hope some day we will meet’ come true,” Ms Ng told The Straits Times.

“I mean, I’m still young. So, if not now, when? Seize the day because with age catching up with us, travelling long distance may not be as easy as someone who is in her 30s or 40s,” she said.

Both 55 now, Ms Ng and Ms Casey were paired through the International Youth Service (IYS) in 1983, when Ms Ng was in Primary 6 and Ms Casey was in Grade 5.

IYS is a now-defunct Finnish service that matched those aged 10 to 20 as pen pals or “pen-friends”, people who wrote to one another and sent letters across vast distances through postal mail.

When they met in Newfoundland, they did an interview together with Canada’s public broadcaster CBC. Ms Ng said then: “I was struggling a bit with my English, and one way to improve was through writing. One of the teachers encouraged us to have pen pals.”

She said she found Ms Casey’s name in the “looking for pen pals” section of a magazine – it was likely placed there by IYS.

Ms Casey still remembers the very first letter she received from Ms Ng. “She had written on the outside of the envelope ‘First Letter’, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is golden!’” she told CBC.

What followed was a long and faithful exchange: 43 years of letters, Christmas cards, birthday greetings, newspaper clippings and small gifts – a friendship that has survived the decline of postal mail.

Ms Ng said she had other pen pals, but Ms Casey was the one who stuck around. Each letter was a celebration, she said, because letters back then really moved at a snail’s pace.

She said it took at least a month for a letter to travel from Canada to Singapore, so there would be a pause of three to four months in between their correspondence.

For her, waiting for her first letter to arrive was like being in The Carpenters song Mr Postman.

When the mail finally arrived, she said: “I was exhilarated.”

A ‘real person’

Their first letters were cursory takes on the weather and the differences imposed on their lives by a distance of 13,000km.

Ms Casey had asked her mother to help locate Singapore on an atlas, and she wondered how she could possibly get there. She marvelled that there was a place where the sun shone all year round, and there was no snow.

“I was learning about what it meant to get a letter so far away,” she said.

Ms Ng, for her part, shared with Ms Casey her love for pop music and roller skating, and what teens in Singapore were wearing.

They both loved writing, she said, and they were curious to know about each other’s lives: the culture, the school system, fashion, sports.

Their letters were mini-art projects. “It wasn’t just the act of writing. It was finding the right stationery, the right pen, different colours of ink that we would use,” Ms Casey told CBC.

They were also into stickers.

“There’d be stickers on the outside of the envelope, stickers also inside, and some that weren’t used that we could share and swop back and forth,” said Ms Casey.

There were also gifts, especially on Christmas Day. “It was special to be able to buy gifts for a friend overseas, and to receive Sonya’s gift was an exciting moment,” Ms Ng told ST.

It was the effort that they put into it that made it special.

“I mean, this was in the 1980s. There was no e-commerce,” said Ms Ng.

“Our friendship grew, and she became a real person, not just someone who wrote letters,” said Ms Casey. “It’s funny how you can feel that connection to somebody just through a letter.”

As they moved into their teenage years, they began talking about more personal things, like boys and university life.

“She was my confidant,” Ms Ng said of Ms Casey. With her Canadian friend, she said, she could talk about her crushes and “deep, dark secrets”.

They would send each other news clippings. “It wasn’t even really important things that might have been happening, but it was important to us when we were 15,” said Ms Casey.

She recalled sending Ms Ng news clippings of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s visit to Harbour Grace in Newfoundland in 1983.

“That was such a big deal to me as a young child, and I remember sending the picture to her and describing what it was like to go see them,” she said.

As they grew older, their conversation’s tone changed and veered into talking about life itself.

Ms Ng wrote about the places she had been to, and Ms Casey shared with Ms Ng her journey to motherhood. “One of my letters said I was pregnant and having my first child.”

Nothing like a letter in the mail

They eventually moved on with the times and started corresponding via e-mail, FaceTime and Facebook, but they kept on sending letters. “There’s nothing like a letter in the mail,” said Ms Casey.

The letters for them were a written record of their lives, memories set in ink on paper.

“It’s kind of nice to reflect back on your life and think what was I doing in 1984 and what was I thinking in 1992, and I have no way to really know that for sure, besides through these letters. There’s nothing else I have written anywhere that would show me a glimpse of my life,” said Ms Casey.

“I was 13, and I was on a diet,” she recalled. “What was I doing on a diet when I was 13?”

Ms Casey and Ms Ng, a brand and marketing specialist, talked about the unique connection they had because they were exchanging letters from two ends of the world.

Ms Ng said in the CBC interview: “There’s really that connection between us. I think it’s the sincerity that comes up from her, that genuine friendship we have built along the years.”

Ms Casey added “there’s something that feels good about it”.

“I genuinely enjoyed getting letters from you. I genuinely wanted to hear what you were saying,” she said, turning to Ms Ng.

“I don’t know if I can put my finger on exactly what it is. But there’s something that feels good about a connection that lasts that long.”

Ms Ng spent six days with Ms Casey and her husband, son and daughter in Newfoundland, to catch up on 43 years separated by a distance of 13,000km.

“It was heartwarming, as I had seen her children as kids in photos, and now there they were in person. They were really a hospitable, trusting and very genuine family. They made me feel like I am part of their family,” she told ST.

Their next stop? Singapore, of course.

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, we said that Ms Ng and Ms Casey began exchanging letters in 1982. This is incorrect. It should be 1983.