DURICK, WILLIAM LOUIS (1882-1961)

DURICK, WILLIAM LOUIS, pharmacist; mayor of Newcastle, 1927-29; b. Saint John, 26 Dec 1882, s/o Thomas Durick and Mary Donnelly; m. 1915, Anne Ellen Quinn, d/o Thomas Quinn and Sarah Jane Morrissy, of Newcastle; d. Chatham, 4 Jul 1961.

In 1905 the Saint John pharmacist Thomas J. Durick bought the Newcastle drug business which had belonged to Frank R. Dalton prior to Dalton's death that year at age twenty-seven. He hired his younger brother William L. Durick as manager, and with the exception of a number of months in which he studied pharmacy at Dalhousie University (1917-18) William L. Durick spent almost every business day in Durick's Drug Store. This was conducted in the Quigley Block until 1923 and then in a new building erected by the Duricks. Several years after he took over management of the store he bought out his brother's interest in it. He invested in other businesses as well, including the John Morrissy Furniture Co., of which he was an incorporator in 1921.

As a younger man, Durick played basketball and took a keen interest in sports in general. In 1921 he was president of the local amateur athletic association. His other activities were numerous: town councillor and mayor of Newcastle, county councillor, member of the County Board of Health, member of the Newcastle School Board for more than twenty years, member of the Newcastle Board of Trade for more than fifty years, member and president of the County Liberal Association, member of the Union of New Brunswick Municipalities, and active participant in a number of Catholic church organizations. Through the drug store and his many other activities he was known to almost everybody on the Miramichi.

Durick's wife, Anne Ellen Quinn, was the organist for many years at St Mary's Church in Newcastle. She held several important church offices and was a district commissioner of the Girl Guides. In 1937-38 she was president of the Newcastle Art Club. There were three daughters in the family, including Rosemary B. Durick, the wife of Lloyd Hawkins, who had an outstanding career as a physiologist in the faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto and later as a senior scientist with the Addiction Research Foundation of Canada. In 1974 the University of New Brunswick, of which she was an alumna, awarded her an honorary DSc.