|
Title: The American's By Mr. Gordon Sinclair - 2009 View count: 1058 Rating: 5.0 (2 ratings) Description: Please feel free to leave your comments and rate my video. I hope that you enjoy this and the other videos that we will be adding. Allan Gordon Sinclair, (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. 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 returing 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. 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. At the time, Sinclair considered the piece to be nothing more than one of his usual items. But when (U.S. News & World Report) published a full transcript, the magazine was flooded with requests for copies. Radio station WWDC-AM in Washington, D.C. started playing a recording of Sinclair's commentary with Bridge Over Troubled Water playing in the background. Sinclair told the Star in November 1973 that he had received 8,000 letters about his commentary. With the strong response generated by the editorial, a recording of Sinclair's commentary was sold as a single with all profits going to the American Red Cross. "The Americans (A Canadian's Opinion)" went to #24 on the Billboard Hot 100, making the 73-year-old Sinclair the 2nd-oldest living person ever to have a Billboard U.S. 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. Tags: gordon, sinclair, americans, america, canada, canadain, news, patriotic, us, politics, katrina, 9/11, terrorist, attack, american, red, cross, disaster, floods, hurricane, earthquake, europe, united, states, france, england, germany, iraq, iraqi, iran, arabs, middle, east, asia, japan, russia, china, debt, foreign, aid, bailout, money, charity, help, turkey, algeria, bahrain, egypt, israel, jordan, kuwait, lebanon, libya, morocco, oman, palestine, qatar, saudi, arabia, syria, sudan, tunisia, yemen, somalia, Author: ObamaSteinNo2012 |
