New Brunswick’s Don Hoyt, a journalist, columnist and political strategist, has died at the age of 76.

Hoyt was born and raised in Saint John and has been involved in Liberal politics since the 1970s. Times & Transcript reports that Hoyt began his career in Saint John in 1952 as a journalist writing obituaries for the Telegraph-Journal. He quickly moved up to general news coverage.

“By then, Don was an old pro,” Mulcahy said in an interview with Times & Transcript. “We’d hear him come trucking into the newsroom after an assignment at City Hall or somewhere. He’d sit at the typewriter without even taking off his coat, bang away for about five minutes and then he was done and gone – stories I would have laboured over for hours. He really knew how to put it together.”

He later worked for The Canadian Press in Halifax and Toronto, and then became communications director with New Brunswick’s Office of Government Organization (the department behind a landmark equal opportunity program). He is credited with modernizing the government’s communication services. He returned to journalism in 1982 and spent 12 years writing a well-read politics and human interest column for the Telegraph-Journal. His book, A Brief History of the Liberal Party in New Brunswick, was published after he retired in 1995.

The memorial service will be held at Bishop’s Funeral Home in Fredericton, Saturday, Nov. 6th at 11 a.m.