Michael Maclear

Who is Michael Maclear?

Michael Maclear 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 and the CTV Television Network, he travelled to more than 80 countries.

Maclear made several wartime visits to North Vietnam 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 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.