Gordon Sinclair
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Gordon Allan Sinclair, OC , FRGS (June 3, 1900 – May 17, 1984) was a Canadian radio journalist and commentator.
Born in Toronto, Ontario, Sinclair joined the Toronto Star as a reporter in 1922. At this time, he befriended Ernest Hemingway, who was a reporter at the paper. Sinclair was one of the paper's top reporters and was assigned to major stories all over the world. He wrote four books about his travels as a journalist: Foot-loose in India, Cannibal Quest, Loose Among the Devils and Khyber Caravan. Sinclair invested his earnings in the Depression-era stock market and was independently wealthy by the end of the Second World War.
In 1942, the Freemason[1] submitted a number of brief radio reports to Toronto radio station CFRB, the station he would be associated with for the remainder of his career. In 1943, he left the Star and became a full-time radio personality. In 1957, he also began a career in television, as a panelist on the CBC Television series Front Page Challenge.
[edit] The Americans (A Canadian's Opinion)
On June 5, 1973, following news that the American Red Cross had run out of money as a result of aid efforts for recent natural disasters, Sinclair recorded what would become his most famous radio editorial, "The Americans." While paying tribute to American success, ingenuity, and generosity to people in need abroad, Sinclair decried that when America faced crisis itself, it often seemed to face that crisis alone.
His editorial became a phenomenon on American radio, and was released on record with all profits going to the American Red Cross. "The Americans (A Canadian's Opinion)" went to #23 on the record charts, making the 73-year-old Sinclair the oldest living person ever to have a Billboard Top 40 hit. (Louis Armstrong would have been 87 in 1987 when his song What A Wonderful World was a hit, but he had died in 1971.) Ironically, Sinclair's version of "The Americans" was not the most popular: another version, read by CKLW radio newscaster Byron MacGregor, made it all the way to #4 in Billboard.
In 1981, when Ronald Reagan made his first state visit to Canada, he praised Sinclair as a figure who had given the United States a wonderful and inspiring tribute in one of its darkest hours.
The Americans was widely revived on the Internet, radio and newspapers in 2001, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, and again in 2005 in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some revivals of the message incorrectly state that it was newly written as a direct response to recent crises; in this question of its authorship alone, the address has become a part of urban legend.
In 1979 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Sinclair died of heart failure on May 17, 1984. A major Canadian award for journalistic excellence has been named after him.
Sinclair's eldest son, Gordon Sinclair, Jr., was also a radio journalist.
[edit] Published works
- Foot-loose in India: adventures of a news chaser from Khyber's grim gash of death to the tiger jungles of Bengal and the Burmese battle ground of the black cobra. 1933. Oxford University Press.
- Cannibal Quest. 1935. Doubleday, Doran & Gundy.
- Loose Among Devils: a voyage from Devil's Island to those jungles of West Africa labelled "the white man's grave. 1935. Doubleday, Doran & Gundy.
- Khyber Caravan: through Kashmir, Waziristan, Afghanistan, Baluchistan and Northern India 1936. Simon & Schuster of Canada. ISBN 0-671-80178-3
- Bright Paths to Adventure. 1945. McClelland & Stewart.
- Will the Real Gordon Sinclair Please Stand Up. 1966. McClelland & Stewart.
- Will Gordon Sinclair Please Sit Down. 1975. McClelland & Stewart. ISBN 0-7710-8163-4
