Mr. Guy R Lacroix

“I was born in Ottawa in 1948, and studied Business Administration at Algonquin College in Ottawa. I undertook a business career, continuing my education in finance and management along the way. I retired as CEO of a large, privately held, manufacturing corporation. As I had always enjoyed writing, upon retiring, I undertook a writing career. My first novels were fictional, but extrapolated from events I had observed during my career. I first published Unfit to be CEO a suspense drama about a multinational company’s demise. I followed up with Bankers and Other Snakes, a financial thriller involving a power struggle and a look into the mysterious world of bankers. I then turned to historical novels with My Grandfather’s Secret, a touching WW2 drama, the conclusion of which unfolded some fifty years after the end of the war. I continued with the theme of historical novels with Montréal à ses débuts: une histoire peu connue (The Early Years of Montreal: a story largely unknown), which begins in 1653 when Maisonneuve, the founder of Montréal, arrived from France with 100 recruits to save the fragile colony from an almost certain collapse. The idea for the book came when I discovered my ancestor had been part of these 100 recruits coming to Canada in 1653. In my latest novel, The Bomb: From Warsaw to Montreal, I had met with a 90-year-old Polish lady who survived deportation to Siberia after the Russian communists invaded the eastern part of Poland when she was only 10 years old. Her story was remarkable and caused me to explore a less well-known aspect of WW2 which is the tragic story of Poland, abandoned and betrayed by its Allies in 1945. In the process, I also uncovered a fascinating suspense going on during WW2 which was the race to develop the first atomic bomb. I imagined a typical Polish family, to tell the story of Poles confronted with untold brutality and war crimes as the war unfolded, and as the race to fabricate the first atomic bomb heated up. The story ends in Montreal amid a series of cliff-hanging events and a conclusion that is as touching as unexpected.

I find history a fascinating topic; I love doing the research for a book and sharing my findings with readers using a fictional story based on factual historical events… typical feedback from readers is that they learned something reading my books. Bottom line, novels are read for their entertainment value, so I always try to build the story involving conflicts and suspense, and of course, what would a novel be without a love story!”