Douglas How

Who was Douglas How?

Douglas George How was a Canadian journalist, magazine editor, and author. 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 Port" to suit the censors at the start of 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 CP 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 CP between 1945 and 1953. 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. He then joined the staff of Time magazine, working on assignments in Toronto, Ottawa and 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.