Gordon Sinclair

Allan Gordon Sinclair
Gordon Sinclair, 1947
Born	(1900-06-03)June 3, 1900 Toronto, Ontario
Died	May 17, 1984(1984-05-17) (aged 83) Toronto, Ontario
Known for	journalist, writer and commentator

Allan Gordon Sinclair, OC, FRGS (June 3, 1900 – May 17, 1984) was a Canadian journalist, writer and commentator.

Sinclair was born in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario. In 1916, before finishing his first year of high school, Sinclair dropped out to take a job with the Bank of Nova Scotia. After a few months, he was fired and started working in the administrative office of Eaton's. During World War I, Sinclair served as a part-time soldier in a militia unit of the 48th Highlanders of Canada. After being fired from Eaton's, Sinclair took a junior bookkeeping job with Gutta Percha and Rubber Manufacturing Company, starting in April 1920. It was there that he met co-worker Gladys Prewett. After an off-and-on relationship, the two were married on May 8, 1926.

Early in 1922, Sinclair applied for a reporting job at all four Toronto newspapers. The only offer he received was from the Toronto Star, where Sinclair started working in February 1922, hired on the same day as Foster Hewitt, who was the son of the Star's sports editor.

Sinclair was given routine assignments at the Star for seven years before he received his first byline. His breakthrough was a series of articles written after living among a group of homeless people, which Sinclair called "Toronto's hobo club" From that point, Sinclair rose to become one of the paper's star reporters, spending most of the next decade travelling the world, filing reports from exotic locations. During an Asian tour in 1932, Sinclair spent four months in India and, after returning home, wrote his first book, Foot-loose In India. It was published in October 1932 and became a best-seller in Canada, with the first edition selling out on the first day of release.

Before the end of the year, Sinclair announced that his next trip would be to Southeast Asia. A public farewell was held on January 13, 1933, filling Massey Hall, with the Star estimating that an additional 6,500 people were turned away. His experiences on that trip were collected in Sinclair's second book, Cannibal Quest, which was a best-seller in Canada and also reached #9 on the U.S. best-seller list. That was followed by a series from Devil's Island, which was also turned into a book, Loose Among the Devils, published in 1935.