He served Canada in the First World War, but until very recently his final resting place remained unknown.
Pte. Norman Fielders enlisted in July 1915 and served in France from September to December 1916.
In the trenches, he developed what today would be called kidney failure. After months trying to recuperate he was discharged and sent home to Canada before dying in October 1918.
More than 90 years later his final resting place is waiting to be engraved.
As part of an ongoing research and restoration project at a Sturgeon County cemetery, his name should soon be added to a granite monument alongside his mother, father and brother.
The monument stands in the middle of the Poplar Lake Cemetery, which had been a neglected graveyard that has now been restored as part of a volunteer effort from the Anglican Church of Good Shepherd.
Church member and local historian John Matthews has headed up this effort, combing through censuses, military records and other documents trying to discover who inhabited the 18 graves the church originally identified through ground-penetrating radar.
Eureka moment
The Fielders' family memorial is a rose-coloured pillar with a string of ivy etched around the top. It's by far the largest and well maintained of the monuments at the site.
It is divided into four segments with the names of John Fielders, the patriarch of the family, his son John McDonald (both father and son died in 1911) and Elizabeth Fielders who died in 1918.
There remains one blank segment and, provided there is no objection from the Fielders' surviving relatives, Matthews intends to add Norman Fielders.
Researching exactly who was put to rest at Poplar Lake has not been easy. There were no official records and only five gravestones.
Matthews has identified 14 of the interred through piecing small pieces of information together until he had the whole puzzle.
In Fielders' case, however, it was listed clear as day.
The service was Oct. 30, 1918, performed by Edmonton's bishop the day after Fielders passed away. It was written alongside all the other burials, weddings and baptisms in the register of All Saints Parish.
Matthews says he didn't know the answer would be there when he started looking through the register, but he turned the page and it was staring him in the face.
"I was just going through there on principle," he says. "That was maybe the high point in all of the research we have done."
Battlefield casualty
Veterans' Affairs Canada officially lists 619,636 men and women who served in the First World War; 66,655 of them died.
Fielders did return to Canada, but with an ailment he developed on the battlefield that took his life before the war was over.
"He was a war casualty as much as anyone who died from a bullet to the head," says Matthews.
The kidney failure he developed was then called trench nephritis, a consequence of the damp, cold and unsanitary conditions of the trenches.
Fielders' medical reports, which Matthews obtained as part of his military file, show he spent months in an English hospital, where he lost weight, was exhausted walking short distances and couldn't sleep through the night.
Continuing story
After media coverage of the project last year, Matthews got a few other leads from the public and has managed to piece together more of the information about those buried at Poplar Lake.
He has identified another of the graves as that of William Latimer, a young boy killed in a horrible accident.
The church has also received permission to re-open the cemetery and has pre-sold four burial plots among hundreds that will eventually be available.
More information on the cemetery and the project can be found at www.goodshepanglican.org/PoplarLake.htm.
