D. B. Blair

Born in Strachur, Argyll, in 1815, Duncan Black Blair studied at the University of Edinburgh and was licensed to preach in 1844. Two years later he moved to Barney's River in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, where he was ordained in 1846 and went on to serve Gaelic-speaking Presbyterian communities for decades.

Blair is remembered as both a minister and a Gaelic literary figure. The ERSKINE project describes him as a Gaelic poet and minister, and library records connect his name with works including Duanagan Soisgeulach: Gospel Sonnets, The Psalms of the Apocalypse, and A Dissertation on the Degrees of Kindred Which Bar Marriage According to Leviticus XVIII and XX (1873). Archival records also show that he compiled notes on the history of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia.

He died in Pictou County in 1893. Although biographical details are fairly sparse online, the record that does survive suggests a writer whose work sat at the meeting point of religion, scholarship, and Scottish Gaelic culture in Atlantic Canada.