Halifax university’s technology to help U.S. find missing soldiers on ex-battlefields

HALIFAX –

A Halifax university will use its ground-penetrating radar to help a United States defence agency identify and recover the remains of military personnel lost on battlefields.

The anthropology department at Saint Mary’s University has agreed to work with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which is responsible for identifying the remains of missing soldiers, sailors and aircrew from past conflicts.

The project involving Saint Mary’s is scheduled for July and will focus on a Second World War bomber crash site in northwestern France.

Saint Mary’s professor Jonathan Fowler says the work will hopefully offer closure to families and help bring their lost ones home.

Fowler is one of Canada’s leading researchers in archeological geophysics and remote sensing.

His research was used to map burials associated with the 1873 sinking of the SS Atlantic near Lower Prospect, N.S., and to identify nearly 300 unmarked graves in the pre-deportation Acadian cemetery at Grand-Pre National Historic Site.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 1, 2023.