On final tidbit worth sharing from my research on Gordon Sinclair describes Sinclair’s youthful days on the city desk, where he’d often be called upon to investigate obituaries to try and uncover deeper human interest stories.
It reminds me a lot of my time at the New Brunswick Legislative Library when I researched and wrote biographies for every politician elected to the provincial assembly from 1784 to the present day. I took very seriously that every individual made an impact on the world (or at least the people around them) in some way, and did my best to uncover a story, anecdote, achievement–something from newspaper clippings, hansard records, local histories, or any other resource available at the library–about everyone that made them stand apart from the others.
Perhaps the practice ran the risk of over-emphasizing something that the individual themselves might not have dwelled on, but but it was a sincere effort to humanize all of them when often the majority of available information was limited to the dates of elections, appointments, or resignations. It also mirrored the practice of Sinclair and other Star reporters seeking to find an interesting nugget of biography to expand on the bare-bones of obituary. The following comes from Scott Young’s Gordon Sinclair: A Life…And Then Some (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1987):
Much that engaged Sinclair in his earliest Star days was exciting and fun, partly because it was all new to him. However, the other side of the coin was obits. Everybody had to do them, but cubs like Sinclair and people who were in the doghouse got the most. Forms were filled out by people wishing to insert notices in the Star’s daily Deaths columns, and each included a spare copy, called a flimsy, for the newsroom. An assistant city editor would distribute these, a handful here and a handful there.Reporters were expected to fill spare time by telephoning relatives or friends of the deceased and finding out more about them: any medals, awards, interesting achievements, or crimes; why the dear departed lived such a long time or such or short time; whether he or she had any famous relatives or was a member of any clubs or lodges. Two or three paragraphs might be printed under headings such as “Fought at Vimy” or “Father of 17″. Sinclair did his share.It was boring work, but to ditch a handfulof obit flimsies meant taking a chance that the Telegram would turn up a good story that the Star had missed.
