Hey, I like Poutine as much as the next Frenchman...

So here's our dillemma: Last year Diane and I visited the Poutine letterbox in Quebec City before it was taken off of the LBNA website. It was in reasonable condition, except that there was no stamp anymore. I had my tools, so I made a reasonable facsimile (well, not very good) for anyone making such a long trip, and we left a hitchhiker in it, too. Then we went off to find the other two in the city (one was missing). When we got home, we found we couldn't contact the placers, Ellen Mountain Maple and Nitsa. Then the letterbox was taken off of the website.
So we put out a general call to the list: Anyone know the placers? Should we adopt this box? Several folks said 'Sure', and one said 'I know the lady - go ahead and adopt it'. Another person said 'I know the lady - she'd prefer you didn't mess with the box', but nothing more. So we left it at that.
Others have gone hunting after boxes that were removed from the LBNA website. Even ones not on a private website. We've found neat ones that way, like Enigma Stone, and we're probably not unique in this. Time passed. It's now not quite a year later and Diane went back to Quebec. The box had been accidentally found by passersby, who wrote something like "How neat! A little notebook!" in French. It wasn't sealed well and was full of water. The logbook was soaked through and pulpy. The hitchhiker was very wet, also. We took it all back to our tent and laid it all out under a very warm sun for the day, but it didn't do a lot of good. We salvaged the hitchhiker.
I was all for taking the Poutine box all away. I made the stamp, and all the rest was just litter. Diane was wiser, though, and we remembered the huge flame wars. It's not ours to take.

So should we have tossed the thing, and saved the Provincial Park cleaners from a mess? Should we all try again to reach the placers? Who actually knows and communicates with them? The place is neat to visit - Is it right to try to adopt it? Maybe a new box nearby, with my own stamp is better, but then that still leaves the question of the unattended box.

I'm going to get the contact info for the hitchiker planter, though, and apologize for causing his creation to languish for so long, and it's now a bit runny.

Trying to do the right thing,
Dave
The von der Insels
P10 F194 X93 H5 E1


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