In the rubble of an century old staircase, inside the Paris building on Portage Avenue in downtown Winnipeg, construction crews have made a fascinating discovery - a series of love letters more than a hundred years old.
One is stamped June 11th, 1918. "Apparently they were just sitting as a group together, not in any box or anything," said Sonya Berthin, General Manager for the building management company, McCor Management. "Everything was quite dusty."
Once the dust was blown away the words on the yellowed paper almost lept off the page.
Addressed to a woman named Becky Rusoff in Winnipeg from someone in Halifax named 'Soko', the author writes "it's a funny thing this love business. It has wrecked this calm exterior I have built around me. It's even painful. I understand the bride's tears at a wedding."
In another playful letter, Soko tells Becky he got a photo of himself taken so he could send it to her. "So this is me," Soko writes. "My God! How the truth hurts. I feel desperate enough to grow a moustache."
The picture of Soko wasn't found amongst the debris, and there wasn't any explanation for how the letters ended up here in the first place.
Berthin hopes someone can solve that mystery. "I think it would be nice if we could find the rightful owners, and pass it on so everyone can kind of just go down memory lane."
That stroll down memory lane could happen in the near future. CTV News has been able to learn more about the couple in the letters.
'Soko' is Hyman Sokolov, and it seems he and Becky Rousoff got married. Their grandson Stephen Sokolov says he thinks it's wonderful the letters have been found. He says his grandfather was a lawyer, and for a time, worked out at the Paris Building. Stephen believes his grandfather must have brought the letters to work. Then at some point, they were somehow sealed into the stairwell, and forgotten for decades. He hopes to get a chance to see them soon.
PHOTO GALLERY: Century old love letters uncovered downtown
