Harold Heaven was always an evocative, yet shadowy person in the life of Mike Mildon.
A native of Aurora, Mildon often heard Harold’s name around the campfire, but the more he heard over the years, the more questions he had on just what became of his great-great uncle.
In October of 1934, Harold, then in his early 30s, went missing from his cabin near Minden. A land prospector by trade and someone who is now described in hindsight as a loner, left his cabin with the lamps still burning, the laundry still soaking, without locking the door – and disappeared without a trace.
His whereabouts, or what ultimately happened to him, was never satisfactorily solved and has remained a cold case for nearly 90 years. But, in recent years, Mildon, a filmmaker and comedian, and his comedy partner, Jackson Rowe, decided to pick up their cameras and do a little sleuthing themselves.
The result is For Heaven’s Sake, a true crime web series now streaming on CBC Gem that blends the true crime format with investigation and a splash of comedy.
“For my entire life, it has just been this campfire story,” says Mildon. “Everyone knows the Harold story in the family; it’s an embellished version and everyone had their own details to it, but I found there’s a huge disconnection there. Until I got a hold of the actual police reports, which was around 2018, there was a face to the name. He was a real person, but I found this was a real case with a lot of investigative holes.”
But where do you start after a trail ran cold more than 80 years ago? Starting with the resources you have. Within the police report was a letter from Mildon’s grandfather, Boyd, outlining why suicide didn’t make sense as a possible fate for Harold. The letter pointed to different evidence that lead to people who, although they might not have known Harold themselves, had a fighting chance of hearing first-hand stories from previous generations.
“When I read the police reports, I really did see some investigative holes and things that I would do differently,” says Mildon, who describes himself as an amateur investigator. “Not only that, but it was almost like we had one more generation that could have heard something, like a kernel of truth. My grandfather is only one generation removed from Harold so time, in a weird way, was of the essence even though it is almost 100 years later.
“The same with Minden, we were about to lose a story to time. I found it really interesting that the same way our family passed own the campfire story and the story of Harold, I thought there might have been someone in the town who was passing down a different version. Maybe it was the truth or some lead they had they didn’t know was important to us. A lot of that happened in the series.”
Throughout the production of the eight-part series, Mildon and Rowe set out not just to put their amateur sleuthing skills to the test but have fun with the final product as well. They are, says Mildon, proud of the tone they set, as well as proving themselves to those who had doubts.
“A lot of people just had no hope in us, that we were jokesters and not going to get anywhere – but we do get somewhere. We get a lot further than I think people thought we would. One of the cool things, personally, was that Harold was always the guy that just disappeared in my family and I think one of the great things about the series is we take a deep dive and try to get to know Harold himself better, who he was at the time. True crime has a lot of tropes. It is always focused on the murder and the evidence, but we take our time to also focus on the person himself.”
So, who was Harold? At the time of his disappearance, he bought a piece of land and was planning to sell it off as property to cottagers. He loved nature and being up north far more than he did living in Hamilton, where he experienced not insignificant family pressures.
He was meticulous and detail-oriented in his work. Did his work get in the way of a highway development? Did that have anything to do with his disappearance? You can only watch to find out.
“This follows the journey of Jackson and I on our amateur investigations and the lessons we learned along the way,” says Mildon. “We do get really far into the mystery and discover some pretty cool things, as well, we kind of learn the dos and don’ts of bringing up the past in a small town and trying to get everyone interested in this topic.”
All eight episodes of For Heaven’s Sake are streaming for free on the CBC Gem app.
Brock Weir is a federally funded Local Journalism Initiative reporter at The Auroran
