Gordon Sinclair - International Reporter For The Star

International Reporter For The Star

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.

Later that year, Sinclair was fired by the Star after failing to get the story on the outbreak of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in Ethiopia. The Star reported that Sinclair was leaving journalism to take a job in advertising. The Star wrote that Sinclair had travelled 340,000 miles in 73 countries for the newspaper. At the time, he was working on his fourth book, Khyber Caravan, based on his travels in Afghanistan.

Doubts were frequently raised by readers that Sinclair had actually experienced the incidents he reported. His Khyber series was so widely questioned that the Star assigned another reporter to investigate Sinclair's claims.

Sinclair's time away from journalism was short-lived. Three months after joining the staff of Maclaren Advertising, Sinclair returned to the Star, this time as a sports columnist. Sinclair was hired shortly after the sudden death of Star sports editor Lou Marsh, who had been one of Canada's best-known sports journalists. According to sportswriter Scott Young, Sinclair's transition to sports was "monumentally unsuccessful."

After a year in sports, Sinclair returned to general reporting and late in 1938 he again went on an Asian tour. He remained at home during the Second World War and was not accredited as a war correspondent.