'I had no idea that they even existed': Family reunites with 80-year-old letters hidden in Winnipeg home

The family of a soldier who fought during the Second World War has been reunited with letters written to him 80 years ago.

More than 20 letters were penned to John Buechler in the mid-1940s. At the time, Buechler was stationed at HMCS Cornwallis in Nova Scotia and was serving in the Royal Canadian Navy.

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The letters were discovered in the walls of a Winnipeg home last summer when the homeowner, George Arcioni, was renovating his kitchen.

The find prompted his daughter Joelle to piece the past together with the present. She reached out to CTV News earlier this month in hopes of connecting with members of Buechler’s family.

“One lady in particular, named Allison, who is a genealogy enthusiast, she actually did a lot of digging into the family and found some names for me,” said Joelle. “So then I was able to look up the names and I was able to contact Bob.”

Bob Buechler turned out to be John’s son.

“I had no idea that they even existed,” Bob said about the letters.

“I said, ‘C’mon, are you serious?’ And he said, ‘Yeah I’m serious,’” said Kim Van Buren, John Buechler’s youngest daughter.

“It just brought back so many memories,” Bob echoed.

Buechler got married and had three children. He died after suffering from a heart attack when he was 40 years old.

“He was a loving father,” said Sue Buechler, Bob’s wife. “I mean, he had those pictures of him with all of the kids at some point or another.”

Bob said he didn’t realize his father kept the letters written to him during the war, and didn’t know why they were stashed in the wall.

“I’m sure he probably just forgot, I’m sure he wouldn’t have left them,” he said.

Now that the letters have been found and passed on to the family, Bob and Kim said they plan on giving them a new home in an archive or historical society.

“I mean, they’re begging to be preserved if they’ve lasted this long,” Bob said.