Michael Maclear

Michael Maclear (born 1929) is an award-winning Canadian journalist, documentary filmmaker, and former correspondent for various CBC programs and for CTV's W5. He is the great-great-grand-nephew of South African astronomer Sir Thomas Maclear.

Born in London, UK in 1929, Maclear moved to Canada in 1954 and joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation the next year. As a foreign correspondent for CBC (1961–1971) and the CTV Television Network, he travelled to more than 80 countries.

Maclear made several wartime visits to North Vietnam (1969-1970-1972) for CBC and later for CTV, the first Western TV correspondent granted admission to the North. In 1963 as CBC's Far East correspondent based in Japan he married Yoko (Mariko) Koide, a news researcher whose contacts with the newsfilm agency Nihon Denpa News and its Hanoi bureau made possible a series of exclusive reports also aired by CBS, NBC and syndicated by The New York Times. Subsequently, Yoko's contacts were key to obtaining Hanoi's military archives for the 13- hour television history "Vietnam: The 10,000 Day War," which Maclear independently produced in 1980.

He has received numerous awards, including an ACTRA Award for Best Broadcaster, three Gemini Awards, and the Canadian Film and Television Producers Association's Personal Achievement Award. In 2004, he won the "Outstanding Achievement Award" at Hot Docs, an annual documentary film festival held in Toronto, Ontario, where he was also honoured with a 13-film retrospective.

His daughter, Kyo Maclear, wrote the novel The Letter Opener, published in Canada by Harper Collins in 2007. Michael Maclear has two grandsons, Yoshia and Mika.

Selected Filmography

• Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War (1980), producer
• The Canadians (1988), writer and executive producer, for CTV
• America at War (2004), director

Selected Publications

• The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam, 1945-1975 (1981, Methuen; ISBN 0-458-95170-6)
• Guerrilla Nation: My Wars in and Out of Vietnam (2013, Dundurn Press ISBN 978-1-45970-940-9)

External links

• Michael Maclear at the Internet Movie Database
• University of Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library: Michael Maclear papers PDF (193 KiB)
• Michael Maclear official website