Kenn Tomasch has already done some excellent work on uncovering some of the reality of the 1979 players strike, in addition to correcting pundits currently under the impression that the five day strike crippled NASL, leading to its demise.  Tomasch hints at the chaotic nature of the NASLPA labour ‘action,’ but it becomes much more apparent reading through various news articles and op-eds in Canadian newspapers from the time.  While there are striking similarities in sentiment in the current MLS labour dispute, there are major divergences in circumstance.

The players strike in late April 1979 was pushed by Ed Garvey, then executive director of the NFLPA, because NASL management refused to recognize Garvey’s NASLPA union.  In a commentary piece in the Globe and Mail (right), columnist Jeffrey Goodman intimates that management’s refusal to recognize Garvey’s NASLPA was related to the fact some in the NASL also had vested interests in the NFL—namely, Lamar Hunt—and didn’t want the same man in charge of two powerful league unions. Indeed, Derek Carroll, president of the New England Tea Men and chairman of the NASL labour relations committee, told the Associated Press that, “We are more than happy to recognize a union but we want no part of Garvey or the NFL players’ association.”

If all the NASL players and teams were American, Garvey may have had greater leverage in the work stoppage.  Yet because of the high ratio of international players in the league, plus the fact Garvey was unable to represent the then three Canadian clubs in NASL (Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto), the five day ’strike’ quickly devolved into a complete mess involving the National Labor Relations Board, the National Immigration Service and nervous foreign players.

While players on Canadian teams could not join the strike (the teams had all filed applications months earlier for local union certification in Canada), they were encouraged by Garvey to vote on any strike action.  The Toronto Blizzard, who had been purchased by as subsidiary of the Global Television network earlier that year, initially voted for a strike action but then “unanimously voted against” striking on the verge of the stoppage, likely under pressure from senior players.  The ostensible reason for the change of heart was to prevent the newly established club from flopping in its first year, but it’s safe to say there may have been pressure to vote against from their new investors.

The lack of Canadian rationale to get behind any strike action, coupled with the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s mixed messages to foreign players—first telling international NASL players, many of whom came to earn US dollars for families back home, that under US law, playing under a strike would lead to their deportation; then effectively killing the strike by indicating it would not penalize players with valid visas prior to the work stoppage—meant a five day fiasco, with some players playing, Canadians voting for and against the strike with no real reason or effect, and many players refusing to step on pitches more out of fear of the INS than any solidarity with Garvey’s NASLPA. Garvey called the INS’ flip flop the “incredible ineptitude of the US government” and vowed to see if he could establish the NASLPA in Canada as the country “had more effective labour laws.”

In any case, the work stoppage was a complete failure.  It was much too short and chaotic as to have any real knock-on effect in the league.  Pundits on both sides of the issue hoping to use what the Toronto Star referred to as the “so-called strike” of April 1979 as a warning sign for MLS are in effect comparing apples and oranges.  Player solidarity is much more uniform in MLS than the NASL, the rules governing international players are less complex, there is no Canadian exemptions for any strike action, and the issues at stake are vastly more involved than simple union recognition. If anything, MLS could provide the sort of work stoppage that NASL thankfully avoided.

In any case, just like today, prior to Garvey’s fiasco no one had a real grasp of the likely strength or weakness of any work stoppage.  That’s where there are many similarities to the current MLS CBA talks.  Jeffrey Goodman’s 1979 pre-strike column (right) for example expresses a fear for soccer’s weak foundations that reads like many of the current blog posts on a possible MLS strike: “a strike at this point might set back immensely the plans and goals of those trying to promote the game and league, possibly ruin them for good.”

Considering Forsyth’s future exploits, a game against some bankers from nearby Galt (now Cambridge Ontario) seems a pretty inauspicious beginning.  Yet it was a small sign of things to come.  Colin Jose notes in his book The Encyclopedia of Canadian Soccer that the 1870s saw an explosion in the number of teams in Ontario.  Roughly three months before, Toronto’s Carlton Cricket Club formed a football section, and Jose points to a Toronto Daily Mail article which explains it had been “formed for the purpose of introducing the London Association game as a great many players disapprove of the carrying of the ball which enters so largely into the Rugby Union game.”

On October 21st, 1876, the newly-formed Carlton team faced off against the Toronto Lacrosse Club.  Despite the initial draw, Carlton won a rematch 3-0 the following month.  A new football power had emerged, and so naturally, a mere eight months later, Forsyth organized a match between his Berlin high school team and the Carlton Club.  While initially meriting only a tiny blurb in the Globe, the match seems to have gone down as a classic, or as the Globe put it, “the finest game of football yet played in Canada.”

Chances are Forsyth knew some of the Carlton Club players from his University of Toronto days (a Globe article from April 1876 details a match between “Eastern” and “Western” Ontario played at the University of Toronto, likely featuring players from U of T and Queen’s University in Kingston. Many of the same names from the “Western” team played for Carlton against Berlin high school, including the goal-scorer).  While Carlton won 1-0 on a strike by R. M. Liddell, the game proved Forsyth’s mettle as a proponent (and player – see the Berlin team sheet) of the game.  While still hardly the game we would recognize today (Jose quotes Forsyth as recalling the pitch was 150 yards long and 100 wide), the match marked the beginning of a shift toward the Berlin-Galt region as the centre of power in Canadian soccer.  It would be a mere three years later when Forsyth would help form the Western Football Association.

In an interview with the Toronto Globe in 1930, journalist William Rattray referred to David Forsyth as the “Daddy of Canadian soccer.”  A long, dry account of his unparalleled interest in the game would fail to do justice to Mr. Forsyth’s legacy in the sport, a man who made a fan and “earnest player” out of Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King; a man who took a gang of mostly Canadian born players from what is now Waterloo to England in 1888 and beat, among others, Sheffield, Sunderland, and Newton Heath, the future Manchester United; a man who wrote one a comprehensive tactical guide to the game in 1891; a man who formed the oldest Football Associations outside of Britain, whose Galt team triumphed in the 1904 St. Louis Olympics in the same year FIFA was formed an ocean away; a man who said of soccer in 1930: “I look on association football as the finest game there is, without any question.”

And yet he accomplished much more in addition to his work in football—he was a first-rate mathematician and an educational innovator.  He introduced practical lab work to high schools across Ontario, unheard of at the time.  He was instrumental in introducing technical schools to the province following his appointment as a member of the Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education.  To say he was a “polymath” almost feels like an understatement.

Grounded in the muscular Christian tradition, Forsyth viewed sport as the height of personal achievement, providing focus and discipline to students.  But it was for him also an expression and means to civic and political participation.  For Forsyth, soccer was not a hobby, a mere diversion or niche interest, much in the way it is viewed in this country today.  It was the outgrowth of a healthy civic life.   It’s for this reason, in addition to Forsyth’s legacy in soccer development in Canada, that this blog bears his name.

Because of the scope of his influence on the game’s development in Canada in the late 19th century, rather than simply provide a summary of his life and achievements, The Spirit of Forsyth will start off by presenting a series of posts tracing Forsyth’s involvement of the game.  It will begin with his education at the University of Toronto in the 1870s, a “hotbed” of soccer, and move through the formation of the Western Football Association, the oldest football association outside the British Isles.  Wherever I can I will present appropriate clippings and other materials to get a sense of the world in which Forsyth lived.

My principle texts in this research are Colin Jose’s wonderful books on the subject, Keeping Score: the Canadian Encyclopedia of Soccer, and The Story of Soccer in Canada, co-written and published by William F. Rannie.  Readers of my other blog, A More Splendid Life, will already know the fundamental importance of Jose’s scholarship in this field.  This blog is indebted to the efforts of Jose and others like him.

The Globe and Mail, November 2nd 1992

The recent Jamaica v. Canada friendly provided a familiar sight to veterans of Canada’s CONCACAF World Cup qualification campaigns.  Outside of a blowout here and there, specifically a friendly on April 5th, 1988 which saw Canada defeated 0-4, Canada Jamaica games have been similarly stingy affairs.

In the World Cup USA 1994 campaign, the difference came by way of Dale Mitchell.  In their meeting on October 18 1992, Mitchell had canceled Hector Wright’s “sizzling volley” (see clip on the right) in the 85th minute, garnering Canada a vital 1-1 draw.  Not bad for a thirty-four year-old who got his first cap for Canada back in 1980.  His form would prove consistent when the same two teams met a couple of weeks later at Varsity Stadium on November 1st, 1992.

Canada coach Bob “Bobby” Lenarduzzi knew the contest would be tough, and that the Jamaicans wouldn’t be too affected by the zero degree Celsius temperatures at Varsity Stadium, Toronto.  Still, the game didn’t create much in the way of chances, despite the Globe and Mail noting the Jamaicans’ “nifty moves” on the “hard and bumpy” Varsity pitch.  The difference came in the fifty-third minute, with striker Alex Bunbury sending a perfect cross to Mitchell who headed in for 1-0, where the scoreline would stay.

Mitchell told the press: “Alex chipped the ball over to me and I had an open net in front of me.  I just had to make sure and head the ball straight into it” (classic Mitchell analysis).  If the name Bunbury sounds familiar by the way, it’s because Canadian U20 international and Alex’s son Teal was picked fourth overall in the 2010 MLS Super Draft for the Kansas City Wizards.

Well, for one, the Spirit of Forsyth is dedicated to Canadian soccer history, a topic that currently lives online in a few dedicated but scattered corners.  Historians like Colin Jose have worked tirelessly for years to save Canadian soccer’s rich history from oblivion; continuing this work online can ensure younger players and fans can learn something new about the Canadian game. I also hope to do my part in unearthing little-read archival information in order to get a better sense of the roots of the game here in Canada.  Time, money, and geography entail much of this work will be initially focused on the Southern Ontario, but it’s my hope the Spirit of Forsyth will expand to include research from across the country.  Think of this site as a gathering place for soccer history enthusiasts.

Yet The Spirit of Forsyth will go further; this won’t be a niche site for historians interested only in attendances and scorelines.  History tells the story of the present, and Canadian soccer can only benefit by learning from the myriad mistakes of the past.  So in that vein, TSOF will strive to present Canadian soccer history in the context of current events.  It will endeavour to connect atomized historical moments in Canadian soccer into a centuries-long narrative.  We are after all a country full of talented players of all ages who go unrecognized, often until it’s too late.  We are a country with a rich and vital history in the beautiful game, and we are still working under a system that was already failing Canadian soccer almost a century ago.

Even so, there will be something here for the interested non-soccer fan: a window into Canada’s hidden cultural history.  As Uruguayan historicist and poet Eduardo Galeano reminds us, soccer is as much part of national culture as music or visual art.  In Canada, soccer tells the story of cultural change, whether from the waves of newcomers following World War II, or the rapid industrialization at the turn of the twentieth century, or from the connecting power of digital media.  Canadians interested in the powerful but unheralded forces which transformed this country from a staunch, post-loyalist Victorian outpost to a, liberal-minded, multi-cultural democracy would do well to study the history of soccer.

Moreover, this is a site dedicated to David Forsyth, a visionary of the Canadian game, and a statesmen.  The site’s first post will give you an idea of why I chose him as the title of this site, and why I think Forsyth is a model of the sort of citizens the game needs to flourish in this country.