Cape Breton woman tracks down great-uncle's lost WW II medals in time for Remembrance Day

A Port Hawkesbury woman has long imagined a Remembrance Day with her great-uncle's war medals.

It will happen this year for the first time thanks to some sleuthing and the kindness of her great-uncle's foster family.

As a child, Angel Scott-Skinner was intrigued by a photograph of a young man that her grandmother kept on a table in her living room in Hadleyville, N.S. She wondered who he was.

When she asked about him, her grandmother, Lilian Hadley McKay, told her it was a photo of her brother, Douglas Albert Hadley, who was killed in the Second World War.

As the years went by, Scott-Skinner thought about her great-uncle more and more each Remembrance Day. She wanted to learn as much as she could about the young man who was killed just shy of his 24th birthday.

"I started kind of digging into what I could find out about him because he wasn't married and had no children or anything," she said. "I was just curious, very curious."

She said she knew that Douglas and his four siblings were born in Dominion, Cape Breton. His parents had settled there after moving from Oyster Pond in Guysborough County.

The children were orphaned at a young age, separated, and raised by different foster families.

Wanting to honour his memory, Angel reached out to Veterans Affairs Canada, hoping they could reissue his medals. However, since she was not a direct descendant, her request was declined.

Undeterred, Scott-Skinner turned to Facebook, where someone sent her a military document showing that his medals were issued to his foster mother, Bertha Seaman in Pictou County. He had listed her as his next of kin.

One of Scott-Skinner's friends, Chris Cook, who is president of the Guysborough Historical Society, gave her some pointers on where to look. She found the numbers for people with the last name Seaman in Pictou County.

This spring, she called one of the numbers and reached John Douglas Seaman — the son of Bertha and George Seaman.

"At first I thought they might think it's a scam or something, but I had a very nice conversation and they said that they still had the medals because his mom, Bertha, kept everything," Scott-Skinner said.

"She thought very highly of Douglas, talked about him all the time and he was named after him."

Scott-Skinner arranged a meeting and went to visit the family.

She was given medals, some pictures and a small Bible that belonged to her great-uncle.

"They gave it all to me," she said. "I was overwhelmed because of their kindness to do that."

Scott-Skinner's Facebook post asking for help tracking down her great-uncle's medals had also captured the attention of Bruce MacDonald, an amateur historian in Antigonish.

MacDonald researches the history of military personnel from Guysborough County who served in the First and Second World War.

MacDonald's role in the journey was pivotal, providing historical context and helping Angel identify the five medals Douglas had earned — several service stars and a volunteer medal — still preserved in their original boxes.

According to MacDonald, Douglas enlisted in May 1941 and eventually ended up serving with the Cape Breton Highlanders in Italy in 1944.

In September of that year, while positioned in the Rubicone Valley, the unit suffered 352 casualties, according to MacDonald, including 52 deaths. 

On Sept. 28, 1944 alone, 10 soldiers with the Cape Breton HIghlanders were killed, according to Commonwealth Graves Commission records. Douglas Albert Hadley was one of them.

"We tend to forget that at the same time as those soldiers were fighting in Normandy and then eventually northern France and into Belgium and the Netherlands, there were other Canadians fighting in northern Italy, as in the case of Douglas," MacDonald said.

"Oftentimes I think the Italian campaign veterans are overlooked and sometimes not given, I think, the attention that they deserve for their service."

MacDonald said it was perfect timing that Scott-Skinner was able to get Douglas's medals and learn about his history in time for Remembrance Day.

Scott-Skinner has never visited Douglas's grave in Cesena, Italy but it is something she'd like to do.

"That would be really nice someday if I could do that," she said. "But that's a big dream."