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.