The family of the late Gladys Winifred Fowler is one step closer to putting the young woman's body in its final resting place beside her family in New Brunswick, more than 90 years after her death in England.

Air Canada will pay to have Fowler’s remains flown from London into Halifax, said Signe Hoffos, chairwoman of the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery where Fowler’s body has been since her death in 1917.

Donations will likely cover the remaining expenses to transport her body to Sussex, N.B.

"I’m absolutely delighted, and I could not be more grateful to Air Canada," Hoffos said.

"This has really touched the hearts of so many people who knew nothing about the Fowlers or their extended family, but were just so concerned that a girl who was meant to have been buried with the rest of her family in Hammondvale, New Brunswick, should have been languishing in the catacomb of the Kensal Green Cemetery since 1917."

Hoffos estimated that it would cost about $9,500 to have Fowler sent home. The body would likely need to be moved in a zinc casket.

Fowler, 18, was the daughter of the former New Brunswick MP George William Fowler. She died in a London hotel in April 1917 of heart problems.

Her body was only identified this spring inside a packing crate stored in a catacomb at the Kensal Green Cemetery. The contents of the crate had been a mystery for almost a century.

Fowler’s father was at the time a lieutenant-colonel serving with the 13th Battalion Canadian Infantry in the First World War. Both her parents died shortly after.

Now her relatives will have the chance to see her body brought back home to a final resting place in her home province.

Hoffos said Fowler was a modern woman studying music at the height of the First World War when she died.

"When she finally expired, bless her, she had two heart problems and pneumonia and measles. She was very ill, indeed, which is just tragic when you think of her youth and beauty and talent," Hoffos said.

She’s glad that Fowler’s body will rest in the cemetery in New Brunswick where the rest of her family is buried. A monument with her name is already in place at the Hammondvale cemetery.

"It would be fitting if Gladys were under it with her brother and parents as, obviously, everyone intended," Hoffos said.

Fowler’s relatives in the United States are aware that her body is being transported to New Brunswick, Hoffos said, and they have expressed their gratitude to those who got the ball rolling.