In 1944 (D-Day), Gordon Sinclair joined the CFRB News Department, with daily newscasts and features that attracted a huge audience. Gordon was born on June 3, 1900, and was a Toronto Daily Star reporter in 1922, but it wasn't until he became Women's Editor in 1926 that he got noticed for a series of articles on hoboes. He was sent around the world four times as a wandering reporter, also finding time to write four books about his adventures. When World War II began in 1939, he was soon banned as a war correspondent after annoying senior military personnel. The day after the raid on Dieppe, August 20, 1942, he was asked by CFRB Toronto for bios of leaders of the raid, and they were so good that five of them were fed to a network. And Gordon instantly had a mid-day personality series called Let's Be Personal on CFRB, which were aired daily until his death. The following January, the Star made him choose between the newspaper and radio, and Gordon chose radio.
Gordon passed away on May 17, 1984, from a heart attack suffered two days earlier. He is best known to Canadians for his years on CFRB and as a panelist on CBC Television's long lived (1957-95) panel quiz show Front Page Challenge. His approval rating is much higher in the U.S., thanks to his 1973 spoken word recording "The Americans", hitting Billboard charts in 1974 with versions by CKLW News Director Byron MacGregor, Country singer Tex Ritter and Gordon himself. Additional background can be found at http://broadcasting-history.ca/in-depth/americans. More details on his life can be found at http://broadcasting-history.ca/personalities/sinclair-gordon.
In 1986 at 3 p.m., 1050-CHUM switched to an Adult Contemporary "Favourites of Yesterday and Today" format, ending one of the longest Top 40 runs of any station in Canada. Several more format changes occurred in the next three years, plus more at the beginning of the new century.
In 1994, the late Stuart McLean's popular The Vinyl Cafe debuted on CBC Radio One. It soon began airing on CBC Radio Two, and was syndicated into the U.S. The show was usually performed live (to tape) on stage at venues across the country. Stuart passed away February 15th, 2017, at age 68. Vinyl Cafe stopped airing the month before.
