Remembering Cousins I Never Met

I’m thinking today of two distant cousins I never met because they sacrificed their lives in battle more than 40 years before I was born.

William and Nigel Boyd grew up Edinburgh, the only sons of William Boyd and Pictou, NS-native Laura (Crerar) Boyd. She was the sister of my great-grandmother, Jane (Crerar) MacKeen.My own link to them was a battered footlocker that was in our house until last summer. 

I know little of the Boyd brothers except what came down through family stories and the research of another distant cousin, David Crerar of Vancouver. I’ve never met David, but he’s