Brigadier Guy Gostling Roy
Toronto Scottish Regiment
10th & 6th Infantry Brigade

We must look to the future. Already we have hovercraft which travel over land and water riding on a cushion of air; rocket harness for individual propulsion of foot soldiers over obstacles; reconnaissance “scopes” that see targets in the darkness; improved management and control techniques.

 All these things call for modernization of the armed forces set-up. Canada with its small armed forces is in an ideal position to do thus.

 (quoted in Toronto Star, 8 March 1967, 6)

Born on 13 August 1901 in Dorset, England, Guy Standish Noakes Gostling was a Toronto corporate executive, University of Toronto graduate, and in his youth a champion wrestler and tennis player. He moved to Canada in 1922, and worked in Winnipeg, where he joined the Grenadier regiment. He mobilized with the Royal Regiment of Canada in Toronto, serving overseas in Iceland and England.

After returning to Canada for a staff course at RMC, he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and later appointed commanding officer of the Toronto Scottish regiment in April 1942. The regiment contributed a detachment to the failed Dieppe Raid, in which he brother Lieutenant-Colonel A.C. Gostling of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders was killed in action. In November 1942, Gostling relinquished command of the Toronto Scottish to Major D.K. Tow on transfer to 2nd Canadian Division.

He served assistant adjutant and quartermaster until promotion to brigadier of the 10th Brigade in May 1943 and then the 6th Brigade in February 1944. Overseas, subordinate commanders complained the troops had become bored and disenchanted after monotonous training regimes. “If repetition is allowed to be carried out in a sloppy manner,” Gostling responded, “it is, many times more monotonous than if it is carried out with strict attention to every little detail because there is a very real psychological satisfaction in doing something superlatively well.”

Frustrated that his battalion commanders did not always follow his directives, he fired Lieutenant-Colonel Andy Law of the Camerons. Law had expected to be removed as he had never gotten along with his brigadier’s brother when he had commanded the Camerons before his death at Dieppe. Soon after, by the end of February 1944, Gostling would also lose his job. He was replaced as commander of the 6th Brigade by Brigadier Hugh Young.

From January to May 1945, Gostling headed No. 2 Canadian Reinforcement Group in Northwest Europe. He resumed his business career after the war and served as honorary colonel of the Toronto Scottish from 1949 to 1965. Unlike some Second World War generals, he supported the unification of Canada’s armed forces in the late 1960s. “The bitter arguments revolve around uniforms, ancient history and personal emotions,” he complained of the critics:

Morale is the most important single thing in war. Many things go to make up morale but the one overwhelmingly important single factor is leadership.

It is significant that Napoleon’s armies in their hey-day had a high level of morale and it was because of leadership, not because they locked back into the distant past for inspiration and not because they were old-style uniforms.

Gostling retired to Niagara-on-the-Lake where he died on 2 November 1982.