Merkel, Andrew Doane

Andrew Doane Merkel was a journalist and poet. Born in New York State in 1884, he came to Nova Scotia when his father, Rev. A. Deb Merkel, took over a parish in Digby. He was educated at King's College, Windsor, and spent most of his adult life in Halifax.

Merkel began his career writing for the Philadelphia North American and the Sydney Record. He was news editor of the Saint John Standard from 1908 until 1910, when he came to Halifax as editor of the Halifax Echo. In 1917 he was hired as the Maritime News Editor for the Canadian Press in Montreal. He returned to Halifax in 1919 when he was appointed Superintendent of the Canadian Press's Atlantic Division. By his retirement in 1946 Merkel had covered a range of regional, national and international stories that included Marconi’s transmission from Cape Breton; the sinking of the Titanic; the first airplane flight in the British Empire; and two world wars. He retired to Port Royal where he purchased a large property adjacent to the Port Royal Habitation, hoping to establish a radio station and tourist attraction in the area. After the death of his wife in the early 1950s, Merkel returned to Halifax, where he died in 1954.

His first book-length poem, The Order of Good Cheer, completed in the early 1920s, was not published until 1944. His second, Tallahasse, was published the following year. Both works illustrate his abiding interest in Nova Scotian history. He also published two works of non-fiction: Letters from the Front (1914) and Bluenose Schooner (1948). In the 1920s Merkel was a member of the Halifax literary group The Song Fishermen; he and his wife, Florence (Tully) E. Sutherland, regularly hosted writers and artists at their South End home, including Bliss Carman, Charles G.D. Roberts, Charles Bruce, Kenneth Leslie and Robert Norwood.