Guelph’s Philip Gosling – business person, philanthropist and nature lover – has put his life in print.
He is a humble man and at 95 years-old he can be difficult to track down. Luckily he was at Wellington Brewery for his book signing on Saturday.
Gosling had copies of his book The Many Paths I Followed and a group of friends seated at his table.
He said the one thing he would change about the book is the title. He jokingly suggested it should be named Ain’t Dead Yet.
The book details how he immigrated to Canada from England, started Wellington Brewery, opened the site for Bullfrog Mall, his time co-founding the Bruce Trail and his love of nature.
“Listen, I was 80 years of age and bored,” said Gosling. “So I had lots of stuff that notes and stuff that I had in my files. And I decided to … put them together. And more than anything, I was thinking of my family, leaving some record for my many nephews and so on. And so I started to write, and along the way as I stated to make some progress with it. I call this guy up,” he said.
This guy is Barry Scutt, longtime friend of Gosling and illustrator of the book.
“He's a hoarder. His history was all in different piles and that. So I volunteered to help him out. So turn that every Wednesday, I'll be around his house, and we would start going through stuff. And then we talked about writing his story,” said Scutt, in a separate interview with GuelphToday.
“He started typing this out one finger. He doesn't type,” said Scutt. Gosling would show Scutt the material he had written, he would tweak it and Scutt would include graphics to compliment the stories.
“He's a determined sort of guy, very smart. business wise, very astute. He … bought Clairfields farm a long long time ago knowing that the city would eventually go down that farm and sure enough it did,” said Scutt.
“And so that's the story. It just happened. Like the brewery happened just by accident. But I took on something. When I get started on something, I like to finish it,” said Gosling.
At the table at Wellington Brewery he told his friends “it’s one of the joys of my life.”
“It introduced me to a lot of people. If you've read the book, I had many many many happy years getting drunk in places," said Gosling.
“I think what he hoped they would take away from it is the fact that he was successful … and made money, but he's given it back,” said Scutt.
The profits from the book will go to the Gosling Foundation, established by Gosling to preserve nature and biodiversity.
