Series 10 - Bliss Carman

William Bliss Carman (known as Bliss Carman) was a Canadian poet born in Fredericton, New Brunswick in 1861. He received both a BA and an MA from the University of New Brunswick, and studied briefly at the University of Edinburgh and Harvard. After moving to the United States in the 1880s, he became the literary editor for the Independent, a magazine in New York City. He went on to work as a writer and editor for various other magazines and newspapers.

During his lifetime, Carman published over 20 volumes of poetry, including Low Tide on Grand Pré (1893), the Vagabondia series (1894 - 1900, with Richard Hovey), The Pipes of Pan (1902 - 1905), and Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics (1904). In the 1920s, he went on a reading and lecturing tour in Canada, during which he was unofficially crowned Canada's Poet Laureate, and officially given membership to the Royal Society of Canada in 1925, and awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal for distinguished service to Canadian Literature in 1928.

Bliss Carman passed away in New Canaan, Connecticut, United States in 1929, at the age of 68.

Journalist and poet Andrew Doane Merkel was born in New York State in the mid 1880s. He came to Nova Scotia as a boy when his father, Anglican Minister Rev. A. Deb Merkel, took over a parish in Digby. From 1904 to 1905, he attended the University of King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia, then moved to Sydney, Nova Scotia to attend the university's School of Engineering from 1905 to 1907. He did not complete this degree due to the closure of the engineering school, and represented his classmates to the King's Board of Governors while the school was closing. Merkel married Florence (Tully) E. Sutherland from Windsor and had three children: J. Arthur, Peggy, and Mary-Elizabeth. Merkel spent most of his adult life in Halifax and is known to have lived on South Park Street. He was a journalist for both the Philadelphia North American and the Sydney Record, in the 1900s, an editor for the Saint John Standard from 1908 to 1910 and of the Halifax Echo from 1910 to 1917, the Maritime News Editor for the Canadian Press from 1917 to 1919, and finally, the Superintendent of Canadian Press Atlantic Division from 1919 to 1946. He died in 1954.

Merkel was also a poet and avid historian. His first book length poem, The Order of Good Cheer, wasn’t published until 1944 although he completed it in the early 1920s. His second book length poem, Tallahassee, was published the following year. Both works illustrate his interest in Nova Scotian history; The Order of Good Cheer is about Nova Scotia’s first French settlers while Tallahassee is about Halifax during the American civil war. He published two works of non-fiction as well, Letters from the Front (1914), and Bluenose Schooner (1948). Merkel was also a member of the Halifax literary group called The Song Fishermen and often hosted meetings of the group, which included fellow writers such as Charles G.D. Roberts, Charles Bruce, Kenneth Leslie, and Robert Norwood.