After nearly a century, the mystery surrounding the grave of a forgotten World War One soldier has been solved, giving his family members a place to finally pay their respects this Remembrance Day.
It’s been more than 90 years since Norman Fielders died from his battle wounds and was laid to rest on a family plot at a cemetery north of Edmonton. But with no tombstone to mark the grave, and only some old pictures taken while Fielders was serving overseas with the 10th battalion, his story soon became a distant memory.
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“He just fell off the radar. His wife left him and she went and married somebody else and so it was just like he never existed,” said Fielders’ great grand-daughter, Linda Granholm.
It wasn’t until John Matthews took over maintaining the Christ Church cemetery that the family was able to have some closure. On a quest to figure out who was buried in the unmarked graves, Matthews used a ground penetrating radar, which found an extra coffin in the family’s plot, that ended up being Norman Fielders’.
“It resembles a floor cleaner and it detects disturbances in the ground,” explained Matthews. “It was certainly a fulfillment of one more piece of the puzzle. It was a real thrill to find that.”
It’s a discovery Granholm and her other relatives are grateful for. “I think he’d be quite pleased with this actually. He’s got a permanent monument and he’s got a place. He really was the lost one in the family.”
With files from Gord Steinke, Global News
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