Many, many years ago, I worked at the then-decidedly down-market tabloid Halifax Daily News. (See my post on the closing of the News earlier this year by Transcontinental.) It was not unusual for our newsroom to receive odd missives, their senders clearly counting that our bent sense of humour, appreciation for the scandalous or unmitigated curiosity would drive us to investigate.

But nothing from my Daily News days compares with the letter that arrived here at inmedia this week. My colleague Leo, who was not without his occasional peculiar piece of mail when he worked with Ottawa Business Journal, has also never seen anything quite so strange.

In a plain brown manila 5¾x9½-inch envelope accurately addressed to the company rather than an individual (but with the peculiar second line, “The Public Relations General”), I found a single sheet of 8½x11-inch paper folded in half and a Canadian five-dollar bill. The envelope bore correct postage and a generic Canada Post frank with the H4T 1A0 postal code, corresponding to Montréal, near the airport.

The sheet of paper seemed to be a colour copy of an original, which may mean additional copies were sent to other people. (So far, I have been unable to find any Google references to clumps of the text for which I searched.) In block capitals, and with all the spelling, grammar, punctuation and paragraph breaks faithfully reproduced here, the text read:

The Bell Canada Express Vu Satellite Dish Startments.

When The Customer Indicates The Desired Programming Has Not Yet Released Payment Maker lings. If A Ten Percent Mathematical Root For A Special Turn Key.

A Perma Frost 700 Perma Lock. Or A Short National Mail Out.

August 1, 2008

That’s it folks. Colour me utterly bewildered. If anyone out there can shed any light on this, please do.