Cape Breton Island is a quiet, remote place. It sits at the northern tip of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia with Prince Edward Island to the west and nothing to the east, except water, until you reach Europe. Among the island's 130,000-plus residents is retired American Sailor Steve Smith, who settled in his wife's hometown of Coxheath after a 20-year Navy career and was recently connected to a fellow veteran in a most unusual way.
It all began when Smith, now the founder/owner of coffee roasting business Bungalow Beans, came across a story by the Cape Breton Post about a mysterious man who was seen walking through the tiny coastal fishing village of Gabarus with only a backpack and a dog, and didn't say a word to anyone. The man came out of the east where, remember, there's nothing between the coast and France save about 2,600 miles of the North Atlantic's rough seas.
Was he a ghost? An Atlantis resident on vacation? The world's most quietly successful long-distance swimmer?
"They don't know who he was or where he came from," Smith recalls of the initial story, but says a discovery was soon made that rendered a supernatural explanation unlikely.
"Come to find out there was a boat, a sailboat, that had wrecked on the shore out there in the (Gabarus) Wilderness Area."
Steve Smith read that article and decided right away to do what he could to help his fellow vet.
"I told my wife, I said, 'Heather, get your boots and get the dog, we're going out to the Gabarus Wilderness Area,'" Smith says. "'And we're gonna find this guy's boat and bring back his stuff!' So that's what happened."
"I took two trips out there," Smith says. "...I found his wedding ring in there and there was a few things from the Marine Corps, a couple challenge coins and some various things like that. So I put it all in a box and mailed it off to him. (First) I had to bring it back home and dry everything out."
Bunn has since received the shipment from Smith, thanking him for taking the time and putting forth the effort to help out. For Smith's part, he says once he found out the shipwrecked Sailor was a fellow vet, he had to find a way.
"If the guy was from another country or had no military ties? It would have been just another story to me, y'know?" Smith says. "I mean, you'd like to help the guy out but you don't know him from anybody. But as soon as you add that title in there 'veteran.' Y'know what? I'm gonna make this happen, because that's what veterans do. You do it your whole military career, and you do it afterwards."