After a journey of over 50 years, a medal that hung on the wall of the Bonnyville Legion will be reunited with the family of the soldier who fought for Canada in the First World War.
The medal, a Queen's South Africa Medal awarded to empire and colonial forces who fought in the Boer War in South Africa between 1899 and 1902, was found in Victoria in the late 50s. The medal was given to Bob Land by his uncle, and he brought it to Bonnyville where it became a part of the interior décor of the legion for the past 10 years. Land is the father of Margaret Chapman, the Bonnyville Legion's current president.
Land, who died a few months ago, always thought the medal belonged with the soldier's family, and local man Dan Gates took finding the soldier's relatives as a personal challenge.
He inspected the medal for clues, identifying it as a Queens South Africa Medal and found a few other clues as well.
“On the edge, it had a name,” Gates explained. “Trooper Frederick Watson. It had his regiment as well, which was the New South Wales Mounted Rifles, which is from Australia.”
From there, he found a Boer War site and found information on the soldier, from where he was born to which unit he fought for in the Boer War. That didn't solve the mystery of how a medal belonging to an Australian soldier ended up in Victoria, B.C.
“Since the medal was found in Victoria, I figured I'd check the Canadian Archive site and see if he fought with the Canadian Army during the First World War,” Gates said. “He did.”
Frederick Watson was born on June 14, 1880 in New South Wales, Australia. He served 16 years o military service in the Boer War in South Africa and nine years of militia service in Australia. He was awarded the Queen's South Africa Medal.
After serving in the Boer War, he enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces in Kamloops, B.C. on March 7, 1916, when he was 35 years old. He fought in Europe during the First World War.
After the war, Watson married Elizabeth Gilfillan in Vancouver on September 7, 1918. He died in Saanich, B.C. on May 29, 1956.
Though solving the mystery of how the medal ended up in B.C., Gates' research did not unearth any relatives.
“After I found out as much information as I could about him, I put out advertisements in Legion Magazine and on websites, looking for a family member,” Gates explained. “Bob always thought it would be best to return it to a family member.”
Ten years passed and Gates' efforts to locate a family member went unanswered. Gates moved, from Canada to Germany and back again in those years, eventually forgetting all about the medal and his search to find the soldier's family.
This past August, out of nowhere, his phone rang. Watson's granddaughter, Penny Jensen, was calling.
“I asked her a few questions first to make sure she was related,” Gates said. “Then we talked for a while. She seemed overwhelmed.”
The feeling only grew when Gates sent her the information he had found on her grandfather, including copies of his marriage certificate and enlistment papers, as well as a photo.
The legion has extended an invitation to Jensen and her family to attend next year's Dancing Under the Stars Gala, a fundraising event in support of the Lakeland Friends of STARS (Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society) and the Bonnyville Legion. The event is scheduled for Oct. 5 2013 and Jensen plans to attend.
The legion members will return her grandfather's medal to her at the event.
