It's a little cardboard box with a big story and it will be the star attraction at Remembrance Day ceremonies at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School Wednesday.

Less than a week ago, the long ago stolen package that holds seven military medals from the Second and First World Wars, suddenly turned up on a bus stop bench at Barton and Nash. Within days, the medals were reunited with the family of the deceased veteran through the power of social media and the enthusiastic efforts of a Hamilton woman to make it right before Remembrance Day.

On Wednesday, teacher Geoff Coombs, 57, will make a presentation about the medals, five from grandfather Harry and two from his great-grandfather, also named Harry, along with a note from the "Secretary of the Admiralty" that was also in the box.

The return of the medal box has turned into the perfect teachable moment for Remembrance Day — touchable artifacts from world wars long ago and a heck of a yarn about how the package, pilfered a quarter of a century ago, was so recently returned to the family fold.

He's hoping the medals will give students "something to connect with ... to bring it home that veterans are part of who we are."

Harry Edwin Coombs was born in 1905 in England and died in Oakville in 1989. He served in the Royal Navy in the Second World War as an engine room artificer, working on boilers in battleships. Three times he went down with ships, and each time managed to survive.

In civilian life he worked hospital boilers in Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto. After a couple of strokes, he moved in with his daughter in an apartment on Charlton Avenue in Hamilton in the 1980s.

Geoff remembers his granddad as having a dry sense of humour and an innate ability "to fix anything."

As for his war service, Harry never talked about it.

As best as Geoff can surmise, the medals must have been stolen during a burglary back then. He doesn't recall the medals being mentioned as missing; only that jewelry was taken by the thieves.

Then suddenly, last Thursday the cardboard box surfaced at the bus stop and caught the eye of Tamara Bevan, a mother of two. It had the name Harry Coombs written on the front.

"I was just waiting for the bus. And the box was just sitting there. I didn't want to leave it there so I picked it and I could see there were medals inside.

"I thought wouldn't it be nice if we could find the family before Remembrance Day." So she took pictures of the medals and the box and posted them on Facebook.

It worked. A teaching colleague of Coombs saw the post and sent him an email.

Geoff is not on Facebook, but he was able to access the Only in Hamilton page to see the post.

"I took one look at it and went, 'oh God, that's my grandfather,'" he said.

Coombs got in touch with Bevan and went to retrieve the piece of his family's history after school on Monday.

He described the experience of picking up the medals as "kind of surreal."

"I thanked her and walked out and sat in the car and sort of opened the box and sort of looked and went, I don't believe this," he said.

"You see these things on the news but you never expect them to happen to you."

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Although Geoff did not join the military, his family has long history of military service. His father was in the air force and his stepson is a member of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and went overseas to Afghanistan.

"To have all these generations that have served, it's nice to see that he (his grandfather) was recognized and that his service was appreciated by his country."

- Guelph poet John McCrae kept the faith