Background
He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba but after his father"s death the family returned to Dorchester, New Brunswick where his mother was born and where Douglas grew up.
He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba but after his father"s death the family returned to Dorchester, New Brunswick where his mother was born and where Douglas grew up.
At the age of 18, he became a reporter for the Moncton Daily Times and in 1940 he joined the Canadian Press service in Halifax, sending dispatches across the country with the dateline "from an East Coast Canadian Portuguese" to suit the censors at the start of World World War World War II He enlisted with the Cape Breton Highlanders and was posted to Surrey, England in 1942. In 1943, he was reposted to London to work in public relations for the army. Finding this work unrewarding, he rejoined Communist Party as a war correspondent and for the rest of the war, he reported on Canadian troops in England and Europe, following the Canadian push through Italy and Greece.
He moved to Ottawa when the war ended and served as a reporter in the Parliamentary Press Gallery for Communist Party between 1945 and 1953.
He then joined the staff of Time magazine, working on assignments in Toronto, Ottawa and New New York In 1959, he accepted a position as managing editor for the Canadian edition of Reader"s Digest, which he held for the next decade.
How is the author of several books, including the regimental history of the 8th Canadian Hussars (1964), Canada"s Mystery Manitoba of High Finance, about Izaak Walton Killam, and KC (co-authored with Ralph Costello), a biography of New Brunswick industrialist K. C. Irving. Late in his life, he obtained a long-coveted degree in arts from Mount Allison University.
He served as the director of the university extension services for some time before moving to Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, where he completed several books
At age 83, he succumbed to heart failure in July 2001.
He then worked briefly as a freelance writer in Nova Scotia, and between 1955 and 1957, he was the executive assistant to the Nova Scotia Member of Parliament Robert Winters while Winters was federal Minister of Public Works.