What examples of lucky coincidence have you had in life?

[Sundancefisher]

I have three that stand out.

When at the pool in Anaheim I was chatting up some other guests… playing the guess where we are from based upon accent game. I faked a bad southern drawl for kicks. Oddly enough I guessed one persons accent as Canadian… he then asked where and I said sounds like Albertan… similar to a Grande Prairie dialect. He was gob smacked cause I nailed it. I thought wow… there’s some luck or something happening on my part. I also guessed a guy from Texas and guessed correctly from Houston. He was stumped trying to guess me and I dropped my fake accent. He then guessed Washington… then Oregon. Finally I also said Canadian and from Alberta… although he had no clue where Alberta was in Canada. Then he said he’s friends with a Canadian. I said where from. He said Toronto. I said we are hours away by plane and a country of over 30 million. Said I won’t know him. He then said his name. Tom G. I said is his wife blind? He said yup. I said ya… I worked with him in Calgary before he moved back to Toronto. Now this guy must firmly believe we are a small country.

Another occurred as part of my organizing a large salmon fishing trip every year for the past 17 years. A few years back I was hoofing it across downtown Calgary… heading to a meeting when I happened to glance down and same a piece of paper on the road. After a few more steps my brain registered it as looking like a cheque. So I walked back and picked it up. It was a corporate cheque… and made out to my fishing trip. One of the anglers had been carrying it around visiting clients all morning and hoping to drop it off and had lost it without realizing. When I called him I asked when he was coming by to drop it off. He said he could meet me in 15 minutes. I asked if he had the cheque and he said yes. I asked him to confirm and within seconds was freaking cause he couldn’t find it. I said… I just found it and we laughed at the dumb luck of it.

Just recently I found out I have a second cousin in Brazil a population of 212 million. Turns out the person is a doctor and lives in São Paulo a city of 22 million. Now I play poker with a group of friends online since Covid and one of them has a fiancé in Brazil… also a Doctor… also lives in São Paulo…. What’s the odds? Yup… they work together.

Love to hear other people’s cool coincidences

[CaberTosser]

When I was 20 I did a stint on a seismic crew, we were laying out geophones in the woods halfway between Edson & Whitecourt. The nature of the work is of course mobile & dynamic as you’re generally either setting down the equipment or picking it up, never being in the same spot for long. Our line intersected at a 90 degree cross-intersection with a seismic line from another company, and our crew met up with their crew at the same time. On the other crew there was a guy that I recognized from high school, crossing this intersection at the same time in the most random spot in middle of the woods in the middle of winter.

[bat119]

I finished a shutdown in BC while traveling back I thought I should drop in on my cousin in Medicines Hat, I didn't have his number or address, I stopped at a gas station to look up his number in a phone booth (before cell phones) and "boom" there he was fueling up his truck, lucky break there.

[nast70]

Several years ago, my family went snowmobiling to long island lake. We were the only ones in the staging lot, and almost ready to go when 2 more rigs pulled in. One of the fellows came over and asked us if were familiar with the area, I said no, first time here. He invited us to ride with them. Great! So we did.
Stopped for a break a while later and we all got to talking. We figured out the fellow who introduced himself was a 'friend' on another forum. Then we started sharing names. The other guy recognized my last name, and asked me if I knew so and so. I said yes, he's my dad. How do you know him? He serviced my dads company's alarm. Well my wife worked for that same alarm company and turned out those 2 worked together like 10 years before.

Another happened when we bought our trailer. We found the perfect unit in the spring and went to buy it, but were turned down for financing because we were carrying 2 mortgages at the time (another story). So got our deposit back and went on our way.
Life sorted its way out and by fall we had resigned ourselves to the upcoming winter season. Driving by the RV dealership we noticed another trailer that looked similar to the one we wanted. We stopped in, asked a rep to show it to us. We figured out pretty quick its the same unit we wanted to buy in the spring. The rep was very confused, as bunk model 5th wheels were basically sold the day the arrived on the lot, how did this one last the whole summer? Turns out, it was misplaced and a lot monkey moved it to the service lot, and the office never took our deposit off it. We happily drove it home 2 days later!

[Stinky Buffalo]

We had purchased a '76 Westfalia camper van in the early 80's and decided that we'd head to California with it for summer vacation, via the Oregon Trail. That summer, my cousin was visiting from the Old Country with his new bride. We also had a '69 window van at the time, which we lent to the happy couple to camp in. I had recently put a distinctive pinstripe on it to class it up a little (meanwhile I had a constant flood of requests to cover it with flower symbols and broken crosses... But I digress...)

We encouraged my cousin to join us on our trip, but he wanted to camp in the mountains and show his wife some of the places where we had taken him when he was younger. So, we headed our separate directions.

Around two weeks later, we headed North and checked out the Grand Canyon etc. and then decided, on a whim, to check out Bryce Canyon. On the way out of the canyon, we saw our '69 microbus pass us, going the other direction. Recognizing the pinstripe (see? there was a reason I had mentioned it!) we wheeled around and caught up with them.

Turns out that it was cold and wet/snowy in the Canadian Rockies and they started to work their way further and further south, looking for warmer weather. How they ended up on that remote road that evening, just when we were going by, was a real mystery.

We took it as a sign that we should finish our trip together.

[huntinstuff]

Saw a girl dancing on CFRN's "Kiddies on Kamera" when I was a young teenanger. Best looking girl ever.

9 years later I met this gorgeous girl at a gathering. Started dating and had a video movie night and she had an old video to show me. Her dancing on Kiddies on Kamera........

[muskegnmud]

back in the 80's I had a chevy pick up complete with an 8 track stereo, I sold the truck and 11 years later I started working at a different company. One day myself and the rest of the crew had to go to a nearby hotel conference room for a training course. My new buddy at the new company invited me to hop in his truck for the ride over. His truck looked awfully familiar, quite abit more rusty, but as we hopped in I knew it had been mine. The odds of running into my old truck must have been astronomical. I asked him if he still had the 8 track tapes and he pulled a Cat Stevens 8 track (was mine, with my initials on the front of the case) out of the seat cover front pouch, slipped it into the player and we had a good laugh

[lmtada]

Won a trip to Hawaii all inclusive at 18. What a blast.
Run out of $$$ in Sudan. Only had travellers cheques (banks closed for weekend). Needed to get across from Sudan to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) across the Red Sea by boat. Met a Italian mafia guy out on his boat, whom traded me USD$$ for Travel cheque. We had a couple drinks 🍺. I lived, all is good.
Found a diamond ring 💍 on the ground. Took it to police, whom returned to me a year later.
Met my wife at Bus Stop. -30c at bus stop. Noticed her from a college class. I Gave her ride to class. We’re married year later (now going 28 years). Was excellent move.
Always lucky 🍀 Irish curse. 🍀

[3blade]

Walking down the street in airlie beach Australia, fishing rod in hand, pass a cafe and hear my name called...cousin is sitting there having breakfast. Knew she was going around the same time but neither of us had anything resembling a schedule, just happened to pass each other on the other side of the world.

When I was 15 y/o, bought my first ever brand new motocross helmet, crashed hard about 4 hours later. Broken ribs, broken arm, bruised kidneys, helmet destroyed but only had a mild concussion - would have been an organ donor without that helmet.

[jungleboy]

I was riding along with a buddy last yr looking for grouse and white tail buck stepped out and by happy coincidence I happened to have my Tikka in the sxs. One thing led to another and we eventually had him for dinner on several occasions after that.

[sns2]

Originally Posted by CaberTosser

When I was 20 I did a stint on a seismic crew, we were laying out geophones in the woods halfway between Edson & Whitecourt. The nature of the work is of course mobile & dynamic as you’re generally either setting down the equipment or picking it up, never being in the same spot for long. Our line intersected at a 90 degree cross-intersection with a seismic line from another company, and our crew met up with their crew at the same time. On the other crew there was a guy that I recognized from high school, crossing this intersection at the same time in the most random spot in middle of the woods in the middle of winter.

Now if this was a girl from high school and you made love in the bushes then you have a lucky coincidence, but this????

[huntinstuff]

Originally Posted by sns2

Now if this was a girl from high school and you made love in the bushes then you have a lucky coincidence, but this????

That IS what happened...Caber just edited for a PG rating....

[pinelakeperch]

Shortly after my grandpa passed, the Hungarian song “Fekete Vonat” (black train), started playing on my iPhone while driving. It was my grandpa’s favourite song, and is one of about 500 songs on my phone that play on a randomized order while driving. When I reached my destination (I was picking something up for a coworker and was unfamiliar with the area), I parked my car and looked up and realized that I was at an old train station. What do you think was staring back at me? You guessed it, a black steam engine. I also found a dime on the road that day. I miss you, grandpa.

[walker1]

My good buddy and bestman was teaching HS here in Calgary 20 plus years ago and in a social studies class he is playing a video of the bombing runs from WW2. There is a few close ups of the pilots and crew, black and white of course and a kid shouts out that the pic shown is of his grampa!!! Turns out he looked into it further and it was !
What a moment.

Mine is small. Fishing the lower bow over 20 years ago in early Dec. I lose my good knife and a Groman with serrated blade at that. Looked all over on many occasions. Found it one year later to the same date and time I lost it.
No rust and a bit of cleaning. Have 3 of them now as my boys have my interests and keep this one in the front wader pocket.

[Robins36]

While out on a houseboat in the Shuswap, we were told that we can cut deadfall for firewood. So we take the ski boat out looking for a tree to bring back to cut up. We end up finding two trees that fell over and were partially in the water so we head over and start cutting them off to drag over to the houseboat to chop up. One of the guys walks along the shore to start cutting the other tree while me and another guy drag the tree back. When we bring the ski boat back to get the second tree, the guy cutting it says there is a black plastic pipe going up the bank. Knowing full well there is no development where we were, we decided to check out where this pipe went. It led up the bank to a wooden door that was covered with spray foam and branches. After walking around the area, we found a generator, dirt bike and miscellaneous household items. The door was locked so we went back to our houseboat and talked with the service guy from the houseboat company as he was there repairing our charging system on our boat. As soon as we told him what we found, he asked that we take him to see what we found. He rushes all of us back to the houseboat and calls his boss to explain everything. Within 2 hours, there is a helicopter circling overhead and two zodiac RCMP boats show up with another boat looking like a small barge.

They told us the story of the man they called Bushman of the Shuswap that stole numerous things from cabin owners and was currently in jail. It was a pretty cool trip and it ended with a camera crew from Global News coming out to our houseboat to interview us.

[roper1]

Late summer ride in the Yaha. We're 10-12 K west of camp we stop to glass a promising sheep slope. Wife takes her glasses off to look through binocs. We head all the way to the camp just inside the park before she realizes they're missing. Wind blowing like crazy, few showers of rain, we ride straight back to the spot the glasses sitting on the rock where she put them down

[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by huntinstuff

That IS what happened...Caber just edited for a PG rating....

Maybe 'Laying out geophones" is a euphemism Sundance isn't familiar with? He's so naïve.... That other seismic crew was, at the time, the only Swedish bikini seismic crew working in that part of the province... I guess my ruse about Annika being a dude I knew from high school was seen right through!

[Positrac]

Originally Posted by Robins36

While out on a houseboat in the Shuswap, we were told that we can cut deadfall for firewood. So we take the ski boat out looking for a tree to bring back to cut up. We end up finding two trees that fell over and were partially in the water so we head over and start cutting them off to drag over to the houseboat to chop up. One of the guys walks along the shore to start cutting the other tree while me and another guy drag the tree back. When we bring the ski boat back to get the second tree, the guy cutting it says there is a black plastic pipe going up the bank. Knowing full well there is no development where we were, we decided to check out where this pipe went. It led up the bank to a wooden door that was covered with spray foam and branches. After walking around the area, we found a generator, dirt bike and miscellaneous household items. The door was locked so we went back to our houseboat and talked with the service guy from the houseboat company as he was there repairing our charging system on our boat. As soon as we told him what we found, he asked that we take him to see what we found. He rushes all of us back to the houseboat and calls his boss to explain everything. Within 2 hours, there is a helicopter circling overhead and two zodiac RCMP boats show up with another boat looking like a small barge.

They told us the story of the man they called Bushman of the Shuswap that stole numerous things from cabin owners and was currently in jail. It was a pretty cool trip and it ended with a camera crew from Global News coming out to our houseboat to interview us.

I remember that. Early 2000’s if I recall. Neat story.

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by CaberTosser

Maybe 'Laying out geophones" is a euphemism Sundance isn't familiar with? He's so naïve.... That other seismic crew was, at the time, the only Swedish bikini seismic crew working in that part of the province... I guess my ruse about Annika being a dude I knew from high school was seen right through!

Hey.. don’t get me mixed up with your “what’s happens at seismic camp…stays at seismic camp” experience…

I’m Switzerland.

[JD848]

My mother wanted to be buried in NB beside her parents. She had just passed away and i got call to go to NB on a pipeline job from out of nowhere.

So of i go to NB with my mothers ashes and started work blasting rock from Saint John's NB to Ste Stephens Maine.

We got rained out one day so i got the day off so i went to buy a headstone and had got direction's to 3 places that sell them.

The fog rolled in off the bay of fundy so bad i could not see 40 feet ahead and of coarse i got lost for 25 minutes , then out of nowhere there was a place that sold headstones right in front of me so i drove in. This place wasn't even on my list.

So i picked out one i wanted for my mother and i asked the women where this stone came from and she told me a town called Kenora and it caught me of guard and I said where, she said Kenora and i told her that's where I live and my home is there

Then she said where the quarry was and had a small picture she handed me of the place that was tacked to the wall, i looked at her and said i put up that gate and i cut the road into that quarry and cut the quarry 30 years ago , she looked a bit off looking at me. I took the contract one summer and did the work myself 30 years .

So i drove 2500 miles to a job i had never even thought of right out of the blue and never been there in my life ever, then i get lost in the fog and find what i'm looking for with a picture of the gate and road which was my work hanging on a wall and not a large picture .Just an old photo from a camera 5 inches by 5 inches hanging on the wall above her desk five feet away from the headstone I purchased.

The odds of all this happening are not great almost impossible ,not so much the rock ,but the picture which was like 30 years old since i drove by there for 35 years going to work every week in the middle of nowhere and that gate was replaced with a much larger one. The one in the picture was the gate
I welded up and had 2 holes drill for the main posts. There is no other photo of this gate that i ever seen and not even the quarry owners have that photo . Trust me when i got back home i went looking to talk with the owners.

How this all came to be is beyond anything i can explain ,so i went out and had about 20 good shots of whiskey and when i walk out i looked up to the sky and said to myself OKA i get it, enough now please. Now i know why I'm here

In my heart i felt it was a very lucky thing or coincidence ,because i knew my creator was sending me a very powerful message to reassure me never to lose my faith.

Cheers
JD

[Head Lice]

Had parked my truck on an old grassed-in logging road. Was about two kilometers away from it and heading back. Leaned down to put the Schnauzer on her leash, and spotted my truck keys laying in the grass. Looked to the skies, smiled and said 'thanks buddy' . . .

[walker1]

I forgot one.....
My dad passed away in 2014 in Cape Breton. I was living in Calgary since 1997. My oldest son at the time would have been around 10. He woke up screaming in the middle of the night with a terrible dream and after some consoling he shares that his dream involved Papa and the graveyard and the site had a big hole in the ground empty. He was not east for the funeral.
This is where it gets freaky. I come down stairs the next morning and check my phone and my brother had sent a text with a pic of the new headstone in place for my Dad!!! With the 3 hour time difference it was within minutes of the bad dream Alexander had . Someone was reaching out to him I think????

I know this is a bit different than the other stories but still coincidence in my mind. Can not believe I forgot this when I posted a few days back of other incidents.

[chad66]

Originally Posted by Sundancefisher

I have three that stand out.

When at the pool in Anaheim I was chatting up some other guests… playing the guess where we are from based upon accent game. I faked a bad southern drawl for kicks. Oddly enough I guessed one persons accent as Canadian… he then asked where and I said sounds like Albertan… similar to a Grande Prairie dialect. He was gob smacked cause I nailed it. I thought wow… there’s some luck or something happening on my part. I also guessed a guy from Texas and guessed correctly from Houston. He was stumped trying to guess me and I dropped my fake accent. He then guessed Washington… then Oregon. Finally I also said Canadian and from Alberta… although he had no clue where Alberta was in Canada. Then he said he’s friends with a Canadian. I said where from. He said Toronto. I said we are hours away by plane and a country of over 30 million. Said I won’t know him. He then said his name. Tom G. I said is his wife blind? He said yup. I said ya… I worked with him in Calgary before he moved back to Toronto. Now this guy must firmly believe we are a small country.

Another occurred as part of my organizing a large salmon fishing trip every year for the past 17 years. A few years back I was hoofing it across downtown Calgary… heading to a meeting when I happened to glance down and same a piece of paper on the road. After a few more steps my brain registered it as looking like a cheque. So I walked back and picked it up. It was a corporate cheque… and made out to my fishing trip. One of the anglers had been carrying it around visiting clients all morning and hoping to drop it off and had lost it without realizing. When I called him I asked when he was coming by to drop it off. He said he could meet me in 15 minutes. I asked if he had the cheque and he said yes. I asked him to confirm and within seconds was freaking cause he couldn’t find it. I said… I just found it and we laughed at the dumb luck of it.

Just recently I found out I have a second cousin in Brazil a population of 212 million. Turns out the person is a doctor and lives in São Paulo a city of 22 million. Now I play poker with a group of friends online since Covid and one of them has a fiancé in Brazil… also a Doctor… also lives in São Paulo…. What’s the odds? Yup… they work together.

Love to hear other people’s cool coincidences

About 38 years ago I was living in Rocky, finishing up high school. I went on a hike with my future father in law. (He had a ewe sheep licence)We parked at the cline river crossing well before daylight and made the steady pace to the first place you can easily cross the cline river, took our boots off, and crossed bare foot, put our boots back on, and climbed to the top of the mountain as the sun came up.

If memory serves me correctly when you climb to the top of the mountain and follow the range to the north, that the west side is the white goat wilderness?.

Anyway, we didn’t get far and we see sheep, So we’d stop and glass and walk along. He had a rifle, I was just there for fun.

We walked the very top, to the edge, not long after we started and I took my gloves off and put them down to grab my binocs, when a big blast of wind sent them over the edge, and down they went far out of reach.

Pretty cold up there without gloves but we carried on.

It probably wasn’t more than half a kilometre and there was another good spot to look at game, as we got closer I noticed something laying on a flat rock at the vantage point.

A beautiful pair of leather and wool mittens with finger slits near the palm for easy access to the trigger.

Much nicer than the ones I lost.

We made the12-13mile? loop and back to the truck well after dark and drove back to Rocky.

Thanks for the thread, brings back good memories.

[Sundancefisher]

Forgot this one.

I was in hospital recovering from an extremely difficult surgery.

Nurse came in and was making small talk to take my mind off working my wound. She asked me what I plan to do when I finally get to go home. I said as soon as I can I’m going to go ice fishing. She said she loved ice fishing. She had been attending an ice fishing derby for a few years and won some prizes and her brother invites her and her family to the event.

I said that’s awesome. Did you catch fish? She said they do because the organizer went around and helps people out. Great guy. I said where is the derby.

She said Lake Sundance in Calgary.

I said… that would of been me helping you. I laughed. Small world.

[Geraldsh]

Rimbey hotel lobby 1968; my girlfriend from Bluffton and my girlfriend from Buck Lake both met me at 3:00pm
Damn those rodeos….

[jstubbs]

I had just started junior highschool. Wasn’t having a great time with the new school but I did have a shop teacher that I really got along with.

That Christmas, my fam and I travelled to Phoenix, AZ for a week to get away from the cold. We had been staying in Happy Valley to be specific (just an uninteresting Phoenix suburb—not really a tourist spot). My brother and I went and checked out a local GameStop in a random strip mall. Who do we run into inside? My shop teacher and his family, they had just happen to stop into the same GameStop at the same time as us 2500 km away from home.

I have a lot of other experiences and stories just like that of coincidences / small world stuff, but that one always sticks out to me.

[Stinky Buffalo]

Sundance, your surgery story reminded me of an interesting one I had.

I was waking up from my last surgery, and I could hear the nurses muttering a few things while they were heaving my fat carcass into the hospital bed. I heard, "he lost a lot of blood" and "do you always take so long to come out of sedation?"

As for the second comment, well, I can explain that... I take the opportunity to get a nap in whenever I can! But I digress...

I also heard another voice. A very distinctive one. It was an older lady from a church that I used to attend. First I thought, "wait, did I die, and someone didn't tell me that she predeceased me? And what are the chances that she'd be the one meeting me at the Pearly Gates? Huh!"

It took me a moment to realize that I was indeed alive, and there was no mistaking that lady's voice. The nurses were puzzled when I hoarsely stated, "I KNOW that lady!"

They figured that I was still delirious, and said, "oh, that's nice..."

Eventually, they told me to just call out to her. So I did. Sure enough, it was her, and she was visiting her grandson, who was two beds over from me.

I was hoping that IncrediGirl's face would be the first face I saw when I woke up... She was somewhat nonplussed about that - Turns out that she was on a goose chase trying to find where I had been shuffled off to.

[Stinky Buffalo]

The other day I was out, gathering firewood. I saw a nice birch log lying off the road, so I trundled into the bushes, handsaw in hand, to cut it up and toss it in the truck (yes, I had my permit!)

While I was tossing the chunks of wood onto the trail, my oldest son called out, "well, look at this!"

He was holding up an arrow that he found at the side of the trail. I recognized it immediately; it was one that I had lost over a year ago. I had searched for it for quite a while before giving up.

Showing him the index number on the vane, I said, "See, this is how I know for sure it's mine..."

That was pretty cool.