It’s a Cinderella story without a shoe.

A Second World War vet’s Christmas wish is to reconnect with the mystery woman he sat next to at the 2011 Remembrance Day ceremony.

Greig Higginson, 88, had never been to the ceremony before. His niece, Peggy, offered to take him and drove from her home in Orangeville to get him in Chateauguay.

The pair set off for Ottawa in Higginson’s Cadillac — Canadian flag in the back window and Nat King Cole blaring on the stereo.

Higginson served with the Royal Canadian Navy aboard a corvette in the North Atlantic. Their vessel, the Fennel, helped sink a German U-boat, and a painting depicting this event hangs at the Canadian War Museum.

Despite his hard-earned place in history, Higginson is a modest and reluctant veteran. The only reason he sat amongst them on that cold day was because he was waved in by a pair of silver-haired women.

The one on his immediate right is at the heart of this story.

Peggy hounded her uncle to bundle up for warmth but he’d have none of it.

“I served in the north Atlantic,” he told her. “You don’t have to tell me how to dress.”

But the woman told him to zip up his jacket and he did. She also made him put on his mittens. In fact, the pair never stopped chatting, respectfully, throughout the entire ceremony.

It turns out both had trained in St. Hyacinthe to be signalmen — a Navy role responsible for transmitting, receiving, encoding, decoding and distributing messages using flags or lamps flashing out Morse code.

Normally outgoing and gregarious, no pun intended, Higginson did not get the woman’s name.

“I was too shy to ask,” he said, obviously smitten.

Peggy convinced her uncle to make the trip to the ceremony again this year.

In the swath of people afterwards, Peggy thought she caught a glimpse of the mystery woman — a solitary figure standing near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, seemingly trying to make herself visible.

“I tried waving her down,” she said. “She didn’t see me and I couldn’t just crash through the procession. I lost her.”

It’s hard to say who would be happier if the Christmas wish came true — Peggy or Greig.

“I’ve had the love of my life,” said Higginson, whose wife passed away four years ago.

“I just want someone to engage with, who can relate to me.”

If you recognize — or actually are — Greig Higginson's mystery woman, drop Sun multimedia journalist Doug Hempstead a line and he'll complete the connection.

Call 613-739-5246 or e-mail Doug Hempstead atdoug.hempstead@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @DougHempstead