Series 47 - E. J. Pratt

Edwin John Pratt was a poet and professor of English from Western Bay, Newfoundland. He was born in 1882, and attended Methodist College in St. John's, Newfoundland. In 1907, he entered Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where her studied psychology and theology, receiving his BA in 1911. He then received a Bachelor of Divinity in 1913, and joined the university as a lecturer on psychology. He obtained his PhD in 1917. He joined the Faculty of English in 1920, and taught there until his retirement in 1953.

His works of poetry include Rachel (1917), Newfoundland Verse (1923), The Witches' Brew (1925), The Titans (1926), The Roosevelt and the Antinoe (1930), The Titantic (1935), Brébeuf and His Brethren (1940), Dunkirk (1941), Still Life and Other Verse (1943), Collected Poems (1944), They Are Returning (1945), Behind the Log (1947), and Towards the Last Spike (1952).

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.