David J. Forsyth's Blog: Books

George's Bank

The storm arose early with the unseen sun,
a foggy drizzle, and cold nor’easter breeze.
Then came the howling wind, the rain and waves,
that grew to monstrous, angry, breaking seas.

We cowered in the belly of Alice Rose,
awaiting the passage of that summer gale.
We listened to the wailing of the wires,
and felt the tempest pounding on the sail.

Sheltered below, a league north of George’s Bank,
we trust the wind-vane to hold our downwind course.
“We’ll make Boston in a day or two,” said I,
“if the storm abates before it gets much worse.”

A thousand times the hull slid up the surges,
and rolled just enough to dip her starboard rail.
Four-thousand pounds of lead beneath the sole
stood us back up each time to face the gale.

A knock-down did not concern us that much, with
a thirteen-meter mast bolted to the keel;
held fast by shrouds and stays, all tight and strong.
Through battened hatch, we heard the thunder peel.

“Too much sail,” said I, “We have to go on deck.”
We clipped tethers to jacklines and crawled about.
Groping in the darkness, we reefed and cursed.
Twice, the swinging boom struck my head a clout.

That night we stood the gale in the Gulf of Maine,
when we were young and sailed to seek adventure,
recalled from time to time now that I’m old,
is worth a pirate’s chest crammed with treasure.

A Decade of Writing Books

My first book, a memoir titled Dafydd, was written in response to my grandchildren asking me what it was like when I was a little boy. I enjoyed the idea of sharing my memories and the process of writing so much, that I then wrote Too Cold for Mermaids, a non-fiction account of cruising the Atlantic coasts and inland waterways of the US and Canada.

Then, I gathered all that I could find of the poems I'd written over my lifetime and submitted them to my publisher, Rock's Mills Press, along with footnotes regarding each work's inspiration and meaning. The book is titled, Footnotes.

If I am to be remembered as an author, it will be for my fourth book, a creative non-fiction account of a WWI war-bride, titled Alice and the Machine Gunner.

My first work of fiction, Shadows and Reflections, is a collection of six short stories based on shadows of my past and reflections of my life.

138 copies of Dafydd and 132 copies of Too Cold for Mermaids are now in circulation, along with 65 Footnotes and 135 copies of Alice and the Machine Gunner. Only 34 copies of Shadows and Reflections have been sold to date, but I am honoured that 504 readers now have one my books on their shelves.

There is a very limited market in Canada, a lot of domestic and foreign competition, and marketing is expensive. I'm lucky to have a publisher who fully funds the production and distribution of my books though royalties are rather modest. Still, I'm happy to have reached so many readers, and I'm currently working on yet another book.

I'm a little obsessed with the history of 'ordinary' people, so one of the things I tell my audiences when I do presentations is that every time the lid of a coffin is closed, a story is lost forever.

The highlight of my writing career came just five days ago, when I was notified that Alice and the Machine Gunner is one of four books nominated for the Hamilton Arts Council Literary Award (non-fiction). It's a local award, but I'm very honoured to have my work acknowledged.

I don't expect my writing to bring me fame or wealth, I just hope to share my stories and entertain. If you've read one of my books, I'd be very grateful if you'd take a moment to rate it or write a review on Goodreads, Amazon or the literary website of your choice. It will help me reach more readers, and I would really appreciate your feedback. I hope you'll check out my website at www.davidjforsyth.com.

Women's History Month

Alice Geherty, the great-granddaughter of an Irish linen weaver was born in London, England in 1898 because the potato famine forced her grandfather to emigrate in search of work. She became one of thousands of women who married soldiers from America during the Great War.

London born, Jack Collier, was fifteen when he sailed to Canada in 1910. Five years later he joined the 86th Machine Gun Battalion and returned to England to serve “King and Country.” While on leave in London, he met 18-year-old Alice Geherty.

Jack was gassed on the eastern slope of Vimy Ridge in the summer of 1917, evacuated to England and hospitalised. After months of recuperation, he and Alice Geherty married just days before he was redeployed to France. After the war, Jack and Alice sailed to Canada and bought a little house in east-end Hamilton.

Alice knew she would likely never see her parents again, and she was right. The young war-bride gave birth to five children, endured the Great Depression and a lengthy separation from her husband again during World War Two.

Alice and The Machine Gunner is an unforgettable account of a British girl and her ‘Canadian’ hero. It's an historical record, a biography, a tribute to women and a love story.

While history focuses on prominent people and major events, it tends to ignore the histories of millions of ordinary people. Their stories are forever lost when their caskets are closed. Aside from a handful of memories entrusted to friends and family, the details of their lives are forever lost. Alice and The Machine Gunner is my attempt to preserve one of those stories.

I knew Alice and listened to her stories prior to her death in 1988. I since spent four years researching the details of her life, and writing her story, but you can easily read her incredible story in four days.

The First Alphabet

A thorough understanding of language, grammar and style is essential to the process of writing, so I find the following rather interesting, and I hope you will as well.

The rebus principle refers to the use of symbols to represent sounds; therefore the 26-character English alphabet is based on the rebus principle. The characters are called graphemes, and the sounds they represent are known as phonemes.

An alphabet consists of a set of symbols representing each of the primary sounds of a given language. There may be as many as 400 alphabets in use today, and many others have fallen into disuse over time.

Now let's get on with the history of alphabets.

Egyptian hieroglyphics began as stylised images of the objects they represent, much as did prehistoric cave drawings, but over time Egyptians began using those symbols to represent sounds as well.

Because this dual use of symbols made the message difficult to interpret, additional symbols termed, determinants, were introduced. Used in conjunction with a symbol, they indicate whether it refers to an object or a sound. Thus the Egyptian system of hieroglyphics is not an alphabet.

The very first true alphabet was, however, based on Egyptian hieroglyphs. It originated about 1,840 BCE, at the site of a turquoise mine on the Sinai Peninsula.

In the winter of 1904-1905, at a site known as Serabit el-Khadim, British Egyptologist, (William) Flinders Petrie, found inscriptions believed to have been created by a migrant Canaanite turquoise miner. The characters, simplified versions of Egyptian hieroglyphs, comprised the earliest known alphabet, in that each symbol is representative of a sound in the Canaanite language.

The alphabet created at Serabit el-Khadim was taken back to the migrant worker's home beyond the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Over time, adaptations of the alphabet spread throughout the languages of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Southern Asia.

No writing system based on the rebus principle was ever developed by aboriginals of North or South America, Australia, or sub-Saharan Africa. The reason is that an alphabet, based entirely on sounds, was once a really difficult concept to grasp. This is supported by the fact that only once in human history was such a system ever independently created.

All known rebus-based alphabets, past and present, are believed to have evolved from the symbols discovered at Serabit el-Khadim.

Climate Change

The technologies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have exposed the dishonesty of politicians and news media around the world. Society's response is manifested in a general distrust of traditional sources of information.

Subsequently, a segment of the population finds the evidence for climate change suspect. While it may be convenient to accuse skeptics of ignorance, the fault lies unequivocally with those who habitually enhanced, misrepresented, misinformed and lied by omission.

If political leaders want their electorate to trust their leadership, they must first overcome their own self-interests and demonstrate the depth of their integrity. Even then, they will continue to be encumbered by their profession's reputation.

Climate change is real, and it will eventually make our planet uninhabitable, so we better start seriously considering our alternatives. First, however, we must be wary of politicians and political solutions, because government leaders are driven by lobbyists, polls and self-interests like winning elections.

Governments have spent billions of tax dollars on wind generators, 350,000 of which had been erected around the world by 2018. Some suspect that manufacturers have benefitted significantly more than has the atmosphere.

The inconvenient truth is that wind turbines leave a massive carbon footprint, not only due to the manufacturing of the materials that go into them, but also their transportation, installation, maintenance and eventual disposal. Even before a windmill can be delivered to a site by specially designed and escorted diesel-burning vehicles, installers excavate hundreds of tons of earth and pour a massive concrete base up to 70 feet in diameter, usually supported by pilings up to 40 feet deep. Their installers and maintenance crews drive fossil-fuel powered vehicles, and one day, every one of those wind turbines will become obsolete – and will have to be disassembled and removed.

Electric cars are not the ideal solution either; at least not as things stand today. Dr Graham Conway, principal engineer in the Automotive Division at Southwest Research Institute, has exposed the truth about so-called zero-emission electric vehicles. He begins by pointing out that the carbon output of electric vehicles includes that of the fossil fuels burned to generate electricity, and two thirds of the world's electricity is currently generated by coal and oil. The other impact of electric vehicles is, of course, their creation. While the construction of a conventional vehicle produces six tons of carbon dioxide, the carbon produced to build a battery-driven car is, at present, twelve tons.

None of these facts should deter us from finding solutions to the climate change threat, but they clearly demonstrate the importance of carefully analysing both alternative power proposals and the impacts of political solutions, such as carbon taxes and regulations.

Because Canada's population represents less than one-half of one per cent of the world's population, it cannot significantly impact climate unless it identifies solutions embraced by the entire world.

Whale populations, the number of trees on the planet, and white surfaces all impact our climate, and solar panels, ocean-wave generators and water turbines appear beneficial, but we mustn't stop seeking solutions.

Canada's most effective role is unquestionably in the research and development of solutions which are not driven by corporate and political agendas.

George Orwell Warned Us

“We live in a society where there is overwhelming distrust of institutions that are supposed to give us a shared sense of reality.” – Bari Weiss (July, 2021)

Freedom of speech is being severely censored by political correctness which is simply social peer pressure and bullying. It’s being accomplished through the deliberate, determined creation of a “shared sense of reality” created by newspapers, radio and television. The very sources of information, on which we came to depend throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have in recent years, betrayed our trust by conspiring with the leftist elite to control information.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell

“Those who control the information control the people.” Its not a new idea. Those words come from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, first published in 1945. In the novel, a plan to establish a utopian form of socialism is subverted, as is generally inevitable, by a dictator. It’s difficult to name a dictator who didn’t begin his career claiming to be a liberator. Napoleon, Stalin, Castro and Hitler – even Mugabe – were initially seen by their followers as saviours.

Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a devastating critique of totalitarianism, was published four years later. In that novel, the author wrote, “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Sound familiar?

In Canada, historical figures like Sir John A. MacDonald and Henry Dundas are being vilified. Statues are being torn down by enraged mobs who accept the leftist propaganda as truth. History is being rewritten right under our noses.

And, it’s not simply misinformation and the twisting of facts that we must fear; it’s the media’s blatant refusal to disclose information that counters the so-called truth. It’s what they’re not reporting and the stories they entirely ignore.

For example, are you aware that Pastor Artur Pawlowski was refused bail and incarcerated for fifty-one days without a trial? Allegedly, he “incited mischief” while protesting against the Canadian government’s COVID-19 mandates. It’s a newsworthy story of a political prisoner who’s rights were trampled by “a shared sense of reality” yet the traditional media continues to ignore the story. Pawlowski was threatened and underwent severe deprivation while in a Canadian prison. He witnessed beatings and was in constant fear because some prisoners confided that guards had encouraged them to attack him.

Search Pawlowski’s name followed by “Fox News” or “True North” to read about him, because if you search his name on Google, followed by “CBC” you get, “It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search.”

The influenza pandemic, though a medically devastating and tragic world-event, provided one benefit to society. It exposed the extent to which our governments and the media are controlling the narrative. Their response to the grassroots opposition to pandemic mandates has revealed the dire state of freedom in western society. Still, many continue to cling to CNN's and the Government-funded CBC’s version of “truth.”

To the rest of us, the evil underbellies of political leadership and the traditional media have become obvious.

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, does not make you mad.” – George Orwell.

Books are More than Pages of Narrative

When you purchase one of my books, you should expect a few hours of entertainment and perhaps a better understanding of some aspect of our world, but a book means much more than that to its author. Each narrative represents hundreds of hours of research, keyboarding, corrections and re-writes. Its pages are chock-full of frustration, inspiration, focus and perseverance. Every narrative contains a bit of its author’s values, life experience and soul.

Most authors don’t write for financial gain; certainly not in Canada where the market is limited by its population and flooded with American publications. Production costs are high and royalties amount to about 5% of a book’s price.

If not for the money, “Why?” you might ask. Most writers are motivated by a desire to share something we feel has value; a bit of history, our own perspective, or something we’ve researched that we find particularly interesting.

So, next time you settle into a comfortable chair with a new book, please take a few seconds to consider what went into its creation before you begin to turn the pages.

4-Year Labour of Love

On May 22, 2017, I made the final changes to a manuscript titled Too Cold for Mermaids. By then, more than three years had passed since the publication of my debut book, Dafydd. Four more years flew by while I worked on Alice and The Machine Gunner, an account of a war-bride who left her family and friends behind for the love of a soldier. She never saw her mum and dad again. Finally, on the 17th of June, 2021, after thousands of hours of research, writing and revisions, I turned the manuscript over to my publisher.

I once read that Hemingway wrote 500 words a day. If I had done that, I would have completed Alice and The Machine Gunner in 133 days, but at that point I didn’t yet know Alice’s entire story. Though we knew one another for forty-three years before she died, Alice was already forty-seven when we first met. I had a lot to learn about her and her machine-gunner-husband before I could begin telling their story.

A few paragraphs into the narrative, it became clear that Alice's story actually began three generations before her birth, in a little village in Ireland. Before I knew it, I was delving through old parish records, 19th century census transcripts, and cryptic military files.

Admittedly, I didn’t work on the book every day, but I frequently spent twelve or more consecutive hours reading, making notes, and writing a page or two. During those long days of intense research, I felt as though I was actually living her story. Occasionally, when my wife was out or away from home for a few days, I forgot to eat. At times, I found myself immersed in Alice’s past until two or three in the morning. Then, somewhat reluctantly, I'd close my lap-top and turn out the lights.

There were, on occasion, interludes of one or two days to a week when I didn’t write anything at all, and periods when my research turned up nothing of interest, but Alice’s story is an important one, and I was persistent. Bit by bit, the details of her life revealed themselves through city directories, old postcards, and interviews with surviving family members.

By mid-summer last year, I began to feel as though I was letting my publisher down by taking so long to finish the typescript. In an effort to make amends, and perhaps hold his interest a little longer, I assembled and submitted a collection of poems that I had written over a period of sixty years. The resulting book, titled Footnotes, came out in October of 2020.

Then I got back to Alice, working diligently for seven more months until every “i” was dotted, and every “t” was crossed. Finally, on the seventeenth of June – my eldest daughter’s birthday – I submitted the manuscript to Rock’s Mills Press. Hopefully, some time this fall, I’ll get to hold the final product in my hands, and you’ll get to read it. It’s an incredible story, and a valuable contribution to the history of women. I can only hope that I’ve written it well. Perhaps you’ll let me know after you’ve read it.

Caring for Others

I recently read that anthropologist, Margaret Mead, was once asked, “What is the first sign of civilization in a culture?” A fishhook, a clay pot or a mortar were among the expected answers.

Instead, Mead replied, “A fractured femur which has healed.”

In the animal kingdom, a broken leg inevitably results in death. Unable to escape predators, obtain water, and hunt for food, the victim becomes food for carnivores. No wild animal survives a broken leg-bone long enough for it to heal.

A broken and subsequently healed femur is evidence that someone has protected the victim and cared for them during their recovery.

That’s where civilization begins – with one individual caring for another.

World Book Day

Today is World Book Day, and I feel compelled as an author to say something about books.

I’ve been working on Alice and The Machine Gunner for four years now, and while some of you will find that excessive, there’s an explanation that may surprise you. Most writers don’t just sit down to a keyboard and make up stuff. They usually write about something with which they are familiar, or they spend time researching their subject.

Though the narrative of my book contains fictional dialogue and a little speculation, it’s closely based on the lives of four people who lived between 1822 and 1988. I actually knew two of them rather well, though I only knew them for the latter part of their lives. By the time the manuscript was half written, I had accumulated thousands of paper and digital references to their lives. I’d also compiled historical and geographical material related to the places and the periods in which they lived.

Out of this plethora of overlapping information, I created a timeline for each character. The timeline for “Jack,” who is just one of the story’s four primary characters, occupies fifty-three pages and consists of almost 20,000 words. Here’s a short excerpt to illustrate how these chronological timelines help to guide my narrative.

1917 August 19
German artillery very active from 3:20 to 4:10 a.m.
as were enemy’s machine guns and snipers. 5th
Machine Gun Company’s A and B Sections reported
54,000 rounds expended.
[source: 5th CMG Co. War Diary]

1917 August 20
5th Machine Gun Company reported 58,000 rounds
expended & heavy incoming artillery.
[source: 5th CMG Co. War Diary]

1917 August 20
No. 8 Canadian Field Ambulance relieved No. 2
Canadian Field Ambulance at the Main Dressing Stn &
HQ at Nouex-Les-Mines [France] at 6 p.m. and all
collecting & relay posts by midnight. A holding party
took over the Mairie [town hall] in Nouex-Les-Mines.
[source: 8th Canadian Field Ambulance War Diary]

1917 August 21
At 4.35 a.m., Jack Collier was gassed near “St. Pierre,
left of Loos in front of Lens; the Old German Lines 1 &
2” as the allied brigade on the right advanced. 12,000
Canadian soldiers were gassed during WWI.
[source: Collier interview, 5th CMG Co. War Diary, Canadian War Museum]

I probably spend three days researching for every day of writing. That’s why it is taking so long to write Alice and The Machine Gunner. If you buy my book, you’ll probably read it in a week or so.

I just wanted you to know how much sweat some authors put into their work in an effort to provide goodreads.