FORTUNE FAVOURS A BIELER
Adventures in Life, Love and Business
Fortune Favours a Bieler is Philippe Bieler's colourful story about his journey through the 20th Century and beyond.
Fortune Favours a Bieler is Philippe Bieler's story about his life and his long journey through the prolific 20th century and beyond. It begins with his escape from war-torn Europe in 1941. Then, hand in hand with a number of prominent trailblazers, he carves out a career in industry, banking, farming and even politics. It involves transitions from aluminum in Canada to balance sheets in New York, from cranberry bogs in Quebec to vineyards in France. The frequent failures are compensated by good cheer and some impressive successes.
ONWARD DEAR BOYS
A Family Memoir of the Great War
The Bieler family's vast collection of WW1 letters and photographs tell intimate, firsthand stories of five young brothers and their parents. In Onward, Dear Boys, Philippe Bieler skilfully weaves together his own voice with those of his grandparents, his father, and his uncles into a story of war, immigration, and family life. Settling in the province of Quebec, in 1908, then divided into French-speaking Catholics and English-speaking Anglicans, was a struggle for these devout, francophone Calvinists, but with the unexpected declaration of war 6 years later, came an even greater challenge. In 1915 three of the five Bieler boys volunteered with the Princess Patricia Regiment, and in 1916 the fourth son followed. The eldest, Jean, became an assistant to Colonel Birkett, commander of the McGill-financed Canadian Hospital in Boulogne, and the second-eldest, Etienne, was promoted to lieutenant of an artillery brigade. The other two were privates who fought in battles including Sanctuary Wood, the Somme, Vimy, and Passchendaele, and in 1917, the fourth son, Philippe, died at the front. Upon their return to civilian life, the surviving brothers became leaders in government, science, and the arts : the eldest as Deputy Finance Director of the League of Nations, the second as a colleague of Sir Ernest Rutherford in the research of the atom, and the third as President of the Federation of Canadian Artists. The youngest, Jacques, who was too young to go to war, was an instigator of the CCF party, a precursor to the NDP. Enlivened by a wealth of family archival material, Onward, Dear Boys is a poignant story of the experiences of war and its impact on a family of new Canadians during the first decades of the twentieth century.
GREAT WAR SPECIAL AGENT
RAYMOND DE CANDOLLE
From Railway to Oil 1888-1922
A little known story about railways and the end of WW1, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. (Available in English and in French)
This is the story of a mysterious British strategist who helped to unlock the supremacy of Germany’s Baghdad Railway, mastermind the only major German defeat of the Eastern Front, and insure that the Ottoman’s last prize, was awarded to its citizens.
Raymond de Candolle, had apparently disappeared into the bowels of London, at the turn of the twentieth century. In fact, he had joined a group of enterprising bankers, engineers and tycoons, fascinated by international railway projects. They built railroads in Mexico, Spain, China, Columbia, and in 1911 he was sent to solve a dispute with Germany's Baghdad Railway in Anatolia. In 1916 he is recruited by the British War Cabinet to help stop the German advance to the Ukraine. As chaos erupts in Russia he is sent to deal with the Trans-Siberian Railway, the rise of the Bolsheviks, and finally the capture of Mosul in 1918. In 1921 it is back to Anatolia to deal with its dilapidated railway, and the competition for the country’s assets. He survives the horrors of the Smyrna genocide, and shakes hands with Kemal Ataturk. Raymond's story concludes with his family, and their good friend Ian Fleming, listening to his conclusions about the future.