Heather Wright/The Independent

Sunday, Newell Hasting’s service to King and Country over a century ago was remembered in a peaceful church cemetery near Watford.

Hasting was born in Petrolia and his family moved to Watford around the turn of the century. He signed up to serve in the miltia with Watford’s 149th Battalion before being called up for service. He died in France Oct. 31, 1918. Sometime later, his parents would have received what is known as a ‘Dead Man’s Penny.” It was a brass medallion given to each family who lost someone during the war. Over 3.6 million of the large coins were minted and inscribed with each soldier’s name and the words “He died for freedom and honour.”

Pam Breault of Windsor is Hasting’s niece. Her father was just a boy of four when his brother died. “I just knew from my dad that he had a brother that had died in the First World War; but he had died when my dad was about four years old, so he never really knew him,” she said before Sunday’s ceremony.

She nor her family had ever visited her grandparent’s grave and did not see the brass memorial.

Robert McFetridge, Breault’s brother-in-law from BC, has an interest in military history and researched the family’s war dead. He’d visited the Hasting headstone at St. James Anglican Church south of Watford but never questioned the empty circle at the top of the marker. At least, not until a couple of years ago. “I got this message on my ancestry page from Marion Dryden in Sarnia, and she said ‘We found this in an auction of miscellaneous items in a box. Is this of interest to you?’”

It was of interest not only to McFetridge but to members of the Watford Legion who had named Newell Hastings each Remembrance Day as one of the community’s fallen. 

Sunday, members of the Legion gathered at the headstone where the bronze medallion is back in its rightful place.

“The fact that it has resurfaced and we have the opportunity to rededicate the memorial is serendipitous, although his service more than 100 years in the past, take this time to thank the Lord,” said Bob Alcock of the Watford Legion. “As we gather to dedicate this war memorial, it is not enough for us to just remember. This should be a day of dedication in which we resolve but these dead shall not have died in vain.”

For McFetridge, the ceremony was “cathartic” after his research. Breault could only marvel at the event. 

“This is really something –  that we can memorialize him again…It’s really important.”