Colonel Donald J. Goodspeed of Exeter: Journalist, Scholar and Soldier

Professor Goodspeed at Brock University.

Lieutenant-Colonel D.J. Goodspeed was one of the most extraordinary individuals to have hailed from Exeter.

A Second World War veteran, journalist, lake mariner, mystery novelist, distinguished historian who authored 13 non-fiction books and became Professor Emeritus at Brock University, Goodspeed is claimed to have ‘chronicled the most turbulent periods of modern history’.

D.J. Goodspeed was born in Exeter on March 21, 1919. Tragically, his father died from Spanish Influenza, in Ruthland, Saskatchewan, just months before he was born forcing his mother, Mary (nee Love) to move back to the family home in Exeter where Donald was born.

Mary Goodspeed was an elementary school teacher who taught at Exeter public school until April 1924 when she was hired to teach in a one-room schoolhouse in New Liskeard.

The Goodspeed family returned to Exeter the following year where Donald attended elementary school until 1930 when his mother secured a teaching job near Port Arthur.

While his mother taught in northern Ontario, Donald was sent to Albert College, a private boarding school near Belleville.

According to his son, Peter Goodspeed, his father ‘hated’ the boarding school and in 1932 moved to Port Arthur where he boarded during the week and visited his mother on weekends.

During the Great Depression, Goodspeed sailed the Great Lakes as a deck hand before getting a position as a journalist with the Windsor Star and Sarnia Observer. He also displayed an interest in the military serving in the reserves at the Port Arthur Armory with the 3rd Company, 10th Divisional Signals from 1933 until 1936, and two years with the Lake Superior Regiment.

In June 1940, Goodspeed enlisted as a gunner in the Royal Canadian Artillery. He was sent to the United Kingdom rising to the rank of Sergeant.

In June 1942, Goodspeed returned to Canada to attend an Officer’s Training Course in Brandon, Manitoba.

During a training exercise, Goodspeed broke an ankle riding a motorcycle at night without lights on.

While recovering in hospital, Nursing Sister Edith Ferrall found the ‘brash’ young officer ‘a difficult patient because he wouldn’t stay in bed’.

According to an interview in early 2025, Ferrall found his behaviour intolerable and threatened to put Goodspeed on charge. Six weeks later, Goodspeed married Farrell.

Days after their marriage, she was posted to England where she endured the Blitz as well as attending her nursing duties.

Lieutenant Goodspeed was sent overseas with the 66th Battery, 14th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery and fought in Italy and the Northwestern European campaigns.

After the war, Goodspeed attended Queen’s University. He completed a four-year degree in just two years.

Goodspeed re-enlisted in the army in 1948 and stationed on bases around Canada. He completed a 14-month stint at a Staff College in Wellington, India and served with the Canadian NATO Brigade before.

In 1953, Goodspeed was assigned to the Defence Relation Board, and later the Directorate of History at defence headquarters in Ottawa.

It was in Ottawa that Goodspeed and his wife, Edith, raised their three children. Two sons and a daughter.

The Goodspeeds became involved in their community as Edith taught home nursing to Girl Guides and Donald sat on the local Parent Teacher Association (PTA).

Captain Goodspeed wrote several articles on various aspects of military history. In 1958, one of Goodspeed’s articles ‘The Secret Army’ earned international notoriety. Goodspeed argued that the most successful means to change regimes is to foment rebellion form within

Particularly sensitive to internal strife behind the Iron Curtain after the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the Soviets accused Goodspeed of writing a ‘handbook for subversion’.

Valerian Zorin, the Soviet delegate to the United Nations, demanded Goodspeed’s resignation from the Canadian Army.

The Canadian Army responded by stating that ‘Captain Goodspeed was not advocating the overthrow of any government and that his article was a purely theoretical one written on his own’.

The Soviets seemed satisfied with the arm’s statement, and rather than resign, Goodspeed expanded his article into a book, The Conspirators, which was translated into several languages and was still in use as a guide for plotting coups into the 1990s.

While with the Directorate of History, Goodspeed wrote books on the Napoleonic Wars, a biography of German Field Marshall Ludendorff and in 1967, The Armed Forces of Canada 1867-1967: A Century of Achievement.

When Goodspeed retired from the Canadian military in 1970, he held the title of Senior Historian.

Remarkably, Goodspeed had time to write two popular mystery novels ‘The Traitor Game’ (1968) and ‘The Valentin Victim’ (1969) under the pseudonym Dougal McLeish.

Despite lacking a PhD, Goodspeed was recruited to teach history at Brock University in St. Catherine’s, publishing several more books on the wars of the 20th century.

Dr. John McEwen, the chair of Brock’s History Department who recruited Goodspeed recalled that ‘it’s one thing of which I’ll always be proud; that I persuaded Don Goodspeed to come to Brock. He was a wonderful person’.

Goodspeed became the department’s history chair and later Professor Emeritus, when he retired in 1984.

Colonel Donald J. Goodspeed passed away at the age of 71 at his Niagara-on-the-Lake home on August 1, 1990 (his wife Edith passed in March 2025, in her 100th year).

The Exeter native had been an eyewitness and participant to some of post-war Canada’s most turbulent times.

Perhaps most important, Goodspeed was able to document those times for future generations.