Pen pals from Canada and Singapore finally meet after 43 years

A pair of lifelong pen pals, Singaporean Michelle Anne Ng and Newfoundlander Sonya Clarke Casey, have met face-to-face for the first time, 43 years after they began exchanging letters as schoolchildren in 1983.

The friendship started through a teacher’s pen-pal initiative that linked Ng, then a Primary 6 pupil in Singapore, with Clarke Casey, a fifth-grader in Newfoundland.

Their correspondence was part of the International Youth Service (IYS), a Finland-based programme that matched young letter-writers around the world.

Over decades, the two women traded handwritten notes on decorative stationery, then stayed connected through newer media as they grew up, worked, and raised families, always signing off with the hope that they would one day meet. That meeting finally happened this week in Newfoundland.

Sitting together in St John’s, they looked back through stacks of saved letters and shared the story of their four-decade friendship in a Canadian public-broadcast interview, describing how the habit of writing carried them through life’s highs and lows.

The IYS programme that first linked them ran from 1952 until the rise of email and social media led to its closure in 2008, but their bond endured, culminating in an emotional reunion that fulfilled a promise made in childhood.

Sources: The Independent Singapore,  Singapore Week, BBC News