In the 1920s, New Brunswick was famous continent-wide as a tourism hotspot, and was frequented by big name American celebrities, sports stars, and politicians. The province’s renown was largely the result of one man’s lonely quest to put his home on the map.
New Brunswick was famous during that decade, and was talked about and written about widely in all the major American cities, and tourists made their way here in droves.
This was largely the result of the work of one man, named Doug Black.
Doug Black was from Fredericton, the son of a lawyer who was the one time administrator of Yukon. He went to school in Fredericton and received a degree at UNB, then moved to Toronto to study law. His career path was all over the place; he tried selling insurance in Boston, tried practicing Law in New York City, then moved to Maine where he worked as a reporter. Eventually he moved back home to Fredericton where he became a reporter for the Daily Gleaner in 1901.
He quickly managed to work his way up to become the editor of that paper.
As editor he had a famously dramatic relationship with the paper’s owner, James Crockett. One reporter he trained described their relationship as “the inevitable clash of positive personalities working in close proximity. If the sparks flew frequently, their electric quality kept readers waiting for a new edition.” During his time as editor The Daily Gleaner began to sell not just in Fredericton but all over the Maritimes.
When the First World War broke out Doug Black left his job as newspaper editor and joined the army, becoming a Captain.
When the United States finally entered the war in 1917 he went on a tour with the bagpipe band of his unit, the 226th MacLean Highlanders, through New England to drum up support for the war effort in the United States. Largely due to his journalistic background his New Brunswick unit, nicknamed “The MacLean Kilties,” became quite famous throughout New England, and in a highly unusual twist the unit had a large number of Americans volunteer to join it largely due to his efforts.
After the war, Doug Black returned to working at the Gleaner and kept in touch with his American media contacts, and a remarkable amount of people in high profile positions. He had, in the words of The Moncton Daily Times “an unusual capacity to make the acquaintance of men occupying prominent places in the world.”
Though it was a century ago, the 1920s were an era that many of us would find recognizable. The end of the First World War brought an exuberance and openness in consumer consumption of new goods like cars, fridges, radios, and stoves, new technology, household name sports and movie stars, and a new sexual openness and relative gender equality.
In that era there was an unbridled consumption, car sales in particular began to take off. Automobile manufacturers began to promote tourism as a way to sell cars, and Doug Black hopped on their early efforts as a way to promote his home.
He, along with his wife, Ashley Vavasour, provided newspapers in big wealthy American cities like Boston, Philadelphia and New York City with self-made promotional materials promoting New Brunswick as a beautiful scenic rugged wilderness filled with fascinating animals, people and places.
Remarkably, this appears to have been a personal quest of his he embarked on without a title, job, or even pay. He was said to spend long hours in the evenings corresponding with high profile Americans in the media, sports, and political arenas to promote New Brunswick out of what appears to have been a genuine love of his province.
While he was certainly well respected in the province, and was accepted as a brilliant visionary in his time, few knew what to make of him. It seems that he had few close friends.
New Brunswick’s government took notice of Doug Black’s efforts, and in 1927 appointed Doug Black as the founder and first director of the New Brunswick Travel Bureau – the first ever organized effort to promote tourism in the province. It was only after his appointment that he finally quit his day job as editor of The Daily Gleaner.
In this role he toured the province, advising groups on how to attract tourists. The new modern world of the 1920s was alien and confusing for many all over the world, and New Brunswickers were no different. Doug Black was seen across the province as a visionary whose advice on how to attract American tourists was treated as gospel.
His goal was to make coming to New Brunswick a recurring summer institution among Americans. He promoted the province as a place of scenic beauty, an untouched wilderness full of plentiful fish and game to the big cities in Eastern America.
While he largely got positive press, some of the American journalists wrote stories that stretched the truth, which bizarre results. Boston reporter John Cogswell in particular wrote repeatedly of New Brunswick as place filled with ghosts and monsters. This writer, who never actually visited the province, was the origin of the famous Dungarvon Whooper ghost story about a murdered cook looking for money that was stolen from him. This gave the province a curious reputation which, while it did attract tourists, was not exactly what Doug Black had hoped for.
Sports in particular were a big passion of Doug Black. He was enamored with New Brunswick’s then-popular pastime of harness racing, but his love was baseball.
Baseball at the time was the all-consuming passion all over North America. Doug Black’s baseball analysis became highly sought after and published all over the continent. He was invited to become a member of the Baseball Writers of America, and as a member was able to vote on which players won awards.
He was considered an authority on baseball, and ran a syndicated column that ran all across Canada and the United States analyzing the sport. The Telegraph Journal, evidently not a baseball fan, remarked that he had “an ability to make even baseball stories interesting.”
In these roles Doug Black managed to convince the biggest baseball stars to come to New Brunswick. They came to hunt and fish, and often spoke highly of the province.
The stars always seemed to manage to shoot a bear and catch the biggest salmon when in New Brunswick. However there were a lot of vague rumors at the time that what the hunting operators did to ensure the stars got their big fish and game was neither ethical or even legal. While these allegations were unclear, and may not be true, one might likely assume that if it was widely considered unethical and potentially illegal in the 1920s, the methods would likely be frowned upon now.
Doug Black summoned the most well known guides and hunters from around the province, and brought them on tours of major American cities, bringing with them live moose, salmon, deer and bear in cages to American audiences in big cities, which caused a major stir in those places.
Somehow he managed to even negotiate a way to get special permission to bring Canadian alcohol to be allowed to be brought and served in the United States on his tours, which made them particularly popular at a time when alcohol was illegal in America.
It was all going so well, until the stock market crash brought the era of prosperity to a screeching halt.
The Great Depression is often portrayed now as something which hit one dark day in 1929 when the stock market crashed, which hit immediately and lasted for the next decade. That’s not quite how it happened.
While everyone at the time knew about the Black Friday stock market crash, the effects were not immediate. It took time for the effects to begin to be felt. But when it did, the effects were brutal.
New Brunswick, whose people never fully shared in the prosperity of the Roaring 20s, was unfairly hit hard by the Great Depression. Unemployment in the province hit a staggering 40% — in an era with no Welfare, Unemployment Insurance, Old Age Security, Canada Pension Plans, or even Medicare. While the average person never fully shared in the benefits of the tourism Doug Black brought – and this was especially true for Francophones, women, minorities, Catholics and most of all Indigenous peoples – they all shared in the effects of the Great Depression.
Doug Black’s renown and fame across the province left the people feeling that perhaps somehow he alone could save them from the brutal effects of the economic calamity.
For his part Doug Black was working around the clock to redouble his efforts to save New Brunswick.
He went on a series of tours throughout major American cities bringing with him New Brunswick foods, guides, and live animals like moose and bears and salmon to show the people what the province was all about.
As the Depression grew worse his events got bigger and more frequent, appearing in large American cities and attracting remarkably large crowds.
In February 1931 Doug Black was in Philadelphia where he organized a particularly massive show extolling all that New Brunswick had to offer, attended by dignitaries, celebrities, the media and even American President Herbert Hoover, who dined on New Brunswick delicacies.
It would be the high point of Doug Black’s efforts to save New Brunswick.
That May Doug Black’s appendix suddenly burst.
When he was rushed to the Victoria General Hospital in Fredericton The Canadian Press reported that “Upon first examination doctors held little hope.”
Doug Black died at the age of only 48.
His stature was so big that his death was reported all over North America. The Telegraph Journal, which offered a remarkable four pages of coverage of his life the next day, said he was “recognized everywhere as one of the best publicity men on the continent.” The newspaper printed tribute after tribute to him from politicians, judges, writers, sports stars, and average New Brunswickers.
It was said that his death brought a depression over New Brunswick, and that it was the point where people had to accept that the Great Depression was here to stay.
Doug Black’s funeral was held at Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton, and hundreds of people traveled from not only all over the province, but also all over Canada and the United States, to pay their respects.
As his funeral procession made its way through the streets of the capital city thousands of people lined the streets wearing black to pay tribute to the great New Brunswicker who singlehandedly established New Brunswick’s tourism industry.
