If you think it would be tough to find a needle in a haystack, you’ve never tried finding a diamond ring in the Fraser River.
But that’s just what Burnaby residents Fiona Walsh and Nigel Wakita did after her sparkling princess-cut Tiffany engagement ring fell in the river last summer. Walsh and Wakita, who both work at the New Westminster-based Vancouver Circus School, wed Aug. 15 on Granville Island.
Walsh was performing with the Vancouver Circus School at the 2014 Canada Day festivities on New Westminster’s waterfront, when her engagement ring took a tumble into the Mighty Fraser. Walsh was taking off her ring to place it in a little pouch for safe keeping when it slipped out of her hand and fell through the boardwalk into the river.
“It was waist deep,” said Wakita. “There was no way they were going to find it in waist-deep water, especially in the Fraser’s murky water.”
With help from the “circus crew,” Walsh scoured the shoreline for days looking for her ring. She bought a metal detector and searched the daily, and even hired a professional ring finder - all with no success.
“I was really starting to give up hope by day four,” she said.
When the ring went missing, Wakita was on the road home from Texas, where he’d taken a three-month course in firefighting. After getting a call from his fiancée, he hightailed it home, determined to find the missing ring.
“The good thing is, it is semi-tidal,” Wakita said of the river. “One of the days following my return was going to be one of the lowest tidal days. It was about 8 or 9 in the morning when it was going to be at its lowest, so I had a three-hour window to have an exposed shoreline.”
Armed with shovels and a mesh screen for filtering sediment, Wakita and friend Meregon Kiddo headed under the boardwalk to search for the ring. Kiddo, who also works at the Vancouver Circus School, had taken part in previous ring-finding missions.
“It wasn’t a matter of ‘do I think I have a shot?’ It was I have to be down there until I find it. I’m not coming out without it. It’s not an option to not find it,’” Wakita said. “It was the beginning of the summer too – I would have torn up the whole shoreline if I had to.”
Wakita and Kiddo moved large, heavy rocks out of the search area and started hunting for the ring.
“We found it before the screens or shovels were even necessary. It was half buried in the sediment underneath some rocks,” Wakita said. “Meregon found it. She cried, and then I cried, and then we both cried.”
After washing the grime off the ring, Wakita drove to a circus camp in Maple Ridge and proposed – for a second time – to Walsh.
“The total amount of days it was in the water was nine days,” she said. “I can’t believe it wasn’t washed away with all the boats in there.”
Despite the mishap with the engagement ring, Wakita wants Walsh to wear her ring worry-free.
“The only thing I would ever say about the situation is that a ship is safe in a harbour, but that’s not why ships are built. She shouldn’t be afraid to wear her ring,” Wakita said. “She should live with it normally because there’s no sense in being scared.”
If you’d like to see the couple’s wedding proposals for yourself, you can view The Circus Proposal: Meet Fiona and Nigel (in which members of the Vancouver Circus School were in on the proposal) and Proposal #2 on YouTube.
