An Orillia treasure hunter has been scouring the bottom of Kempenfelt Bay in Barrie and Lake Couchiching in Orillia in the hopes of reuniting people with their lost valuables via YouTube.
Armed with a metal detector, 39-year-old Joshua Johnston has found everything from rings and necklaces to iPhones and smartwatches buried in muddy lake bottoms.
Two years ago, Johnston was walking through a park with his family and saw a man metal detecting when his wife suggested he should try that as a hobby.
“So, I got into metal detecting, and after a little while of finding some stuff, I realized I’m having a great time finding it, but whoever lost it is having a really bad time,” he told BarrieToday.
Johnston’s nephew recently began to scuba dive and is also into YouTube videos.
“My wife said, ‘you should do it and combine your hobbies and make a channel and share it with people.’ So that’s what I did, and I found out afterwards there are huge YouTubers, one with 14 million subscribers, and this is what he does as a full-time job. So I thought it would be fun as a side gig,” he said.
Johnston said he started small, finding time here and there, but had fun treasure hunting.
“I found two iPhones I managed to give back, an Apple watch I’ve given back, a Galaxy 5 watch and a GoPro Hero 12 (camera) that I’ve returned,” he said.
Johnston said finding the owners of iPhones is easy because of the “find my phone” feature, which helps people reunite with their property via GPS technology, although some brands of smartwatches are a different story.
To help get the word out about his found treasures, Johnston began a YouTube channel, called Twitch Treasure Hunting, in the hopes of reuniting lost items with their rightful owners.
“If I share my videos, people may see it and say ‘that’s my watch band or that’s my case, it might be mine,’ and I can try to get it back to them,” he said.
Johnston said he pencils in weekends as to when he can get suited up and into the water to get searching.
“It’s on the side, so I don’t get a lot of time," he admitted.
His YouTube channel may not have 14 million subscribers, but it is up to a respectable 430 followers.
“I’m getting there,” Johnston said with a laugh.
So far, his search locations this summer were the water park in Orillia and the inflatable park at Centennial Beach in Barrie.
The SplashON park operator has asked Johnston to conduct his treasure hunting after hours as “people jump off and could land on me.”
His mission next summer is to try out a couple of new locations up north, which include quarries where people swim, and no doubt lose items in the deep water.
Johnston is also setting his sights on a river north of Orillia where his friend was kayaking and lost everything when it tipped, so he’s hoping to find those belongings next summer.
Most of the time Johnston’s metal detector only picks up garbage intentionally or unintentionally left behind by people on the lake. Any garbage he does find “comes out of there because it’s not supposed to be there.”
Vapes seem to be a growing problem in the world of littering.
“I don’t know if people, when they are fishing, toss them in the water. It’s pretty disappointing what you can find when you start metal detecting,” Johnston said.
Umbrellas, Pepsi cans from the 1950s, running shoes and clothes are common discoveries among the weeds growing out of the muddy lake bottoms.
Smallmouth bass are his usual audience as they always seem to be hovering close by in the hopes of Johnston spooking prey items such as crayfish out from under their safe hiding places as he sweeps away the silt and mud in search of treasure.
What is the oddest thing he has found to date?
Johnston sheepishly laughed as he said: “I found a vibrator.”
He was underwater, just above the bottom, when his metal detector was beeping wildly.
“And as I was digging up the mud, there was this pink thing, and I thought it was a vape until I uncovered it more.”
That particular item may remain unclaimed.
Johnston’s favourite items to find are electronics such as iPhones and watches, “because when I can give it back to someone, it just feels so good.”
As Johnston has two young kids of his own, he can imagine the stress of losing cherished memories such as family photographs, where the only copies of the images might be on lost phones slowly deteriorating on the bottom of Kempenfelt Bay.
When he managed to successfully return two phones to their owners, they were “unbelievably happy.”
“One lady, she used the ‘find my phone’ feature and showed up at my house with the cops,” Johnston said. “Once the initial confrontation was over and she realized I wasn’t trying to steal her phone, she came forward and said ‘thank you so much’, and everything was fine.”
The other lucky recipient of his generosity thought he had left his phone at a restaurant in Mississauga, when in fact, it was in Lake Simcoe in Barrie.
The owner was in Mississauga when Johnston found the phone in the lake.
“I picked it up underwater, it lit up and his picture was on the screen, which was crazy. I put it in my pocket and kept going,” he said. “If you watch it in my (YouTube) video, it was on underwater. I clicked the button and it lights up and everything. The iPhone 13 and above are apparently waterproof,” Johnston explained.
“When I came ashore to switch tanks, it started ringing, so I answered it, and he was like ‘oh, you found my phone? Can I have it back? Where are you?’"
He explained to the owner he found it 20 feet down at the bottom of a lake.
“He thought he left it in a restaurant. He drove all the way back up and got it back. He said he was with his wife on the SplashON obstacle course and didn’t realize he had dropped it,” Johnston added.
Johnston has also found a GoPro camera with footage on it, but he thinks the owners live in Japan as all of the houses in the background appear to be of mostly Japanese architecture. He has had no luck in finding the owner.
“It would be really awesome if they see my video and reach out. I’ve tried reverse lookup online with AI to try and find them. People show up, but I don’t think it’s the same people," he said.
This summer, he located two gold wedding bands and a large, 20-inch sterling silver necklace.
“It’s a big heavy one. When you hit that water it’s coming off, especially necklaces.”
Johnston hopes people will see his videos online and recognize their lost items.
“If they can prove it’s theirs, I’ll definitely give it back to them. But if it doesn’t have a name inscribed, there’s no way to return it,” he said. “I could be giving it away to the wrong person. So, it’s finders-keepers I guess, right? I’m not going to pawn it or anything. I just have a whole pile of them.”
Johnston retrieves silver jewelry more than any other jewelry with his metal detector.
“Silver is picked up on the finder pretty easily. Gold, not so much. Silver rings up pretty loud.”
He said he has found quite a lot of silver jewelry, but says it’s not worth anything.
“It’s 50 cents a gram, so I am going to start giving away jewelry that I find away to people on my (YouTube) channel who subscribe to me.”
Johnston thinks it would be a fun way to get people involved, to be treasure hunting themselves by watching his videos and then giving away the hoard to his viewers, not to mention boost the valuable subscriber numbers.
Turn on, tune in, share in the wealth.
