Message in a bottle with Nanaimo man’s ashes goes across Canada

CHEK

WATCH: We have an update on a story CHEK News first brought you three years ago when the ashes of a Nanaimo man named Biker Bob washed up in a bottle on a series of Vancouver Island beaches. As Skye Ryan reports, those remains weren’t finished their adventure and over time have collected one wild story to tell.

Maudine Previl has her Biker Bob back, three years after tossing a bottle of his ashes into the ocean off Nanaimo.

“He’s still here,” said Previl from her Nanaimo home, holding the bottle with his ashes inside.

She said holding them again is “really spooky”

“I can’t believe how much mileage one man can get after he dies,” said Previl.

Bob Nisbet, who was killed in a motorcycle crash five years ago, took one wild last adventure in the afterlife.

“I mean he went out for four burgers and a beer and he went all the way across Canada on a Harley,” said Previl.

A bottle, a note saying “Biker Bob. If you find me turn me loose,” inside and his ashes, were first found by Justun Bevis off Nanaimo’s Jack Point near where Previl threw it, in November 2015.

“I wanted to continue his you know… let him go off,” said Bevis.

“Let him keep sailing,” the Nanaimo man told CHEK News in February 2016.

Bevis took Bob out for a beer and put him back in the ocean off Dallas Road in Victoria.

Then over waves and tides the bottle made its way to China Beach in Sooke where Caleb Harding was walking with his girlfriend. The couple drove Bob to Tofino and even bought him a beer before throwing back in the water and he washed up on Clayoquot Island.

A documentary for CBC named “Biker Bob’s Posthumous Adventure,” found out that Bob’s ashes found their way back onto a motorcycle and travelled all the way to New Brunswick.

Then the bottle and ashes were returned to Previl in Nanaimo.

“And he just had a great time,” said Previl.

“He’s home. This is where he’s supposed to be. I gather. This is where he wants to be.”

Bob’s ashes are safely back up overlooking his garage now where he spent so many hours.

Home to stay this time, his wife said, for good.

Watch CBC’s documentary below: 

Skye RyanSkye Ryan

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