Born in 1929 in London, England, Michael Maclear came to Canada in 1954. In 1955 he joined the CBC television news service and became producer of Canada's first weekly television news programme, "Newsmagazine". He became a foreign correspondent, reporting on Cuba as Fidel Castro took over, China during the Cultural Revolution, Czechoslovakia during the Soviet Union's invasion. Maclear first went to Vietnam in 1959, revisiting on and off for twenty years. In 1969, he became the first Western television news correspondent admitted to North Vietnam. He arrived in Hanoi in September of 1969 where Ho Chi Minh had just died. In 1970, Maclear gained permission to film and interview American Prisoners of War, in North Vietnam, on Christmas Day, the first such access to these pilots who had been in captivity for as long as six years. In February 1979 he returned to research military film archives for his television series, "VIetnam: The Ten Thousand Day War". Since then Maclear has been an independent producer and journalist, and is now Chairman of Screenlife Productions Limited.
From the description of Michael Maclear Papers 1945-1998. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 225078159
