Charles Burchill Lynch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Charles Burchill Lynch | |
 Charles Lynch |
|
| Born: | December 3, 1919 Cambridge, Massachusetts |
|---|---|
| Died: | July 21, 1994 Ottawa, Ontario |
| Occupation: | Journalist and Author |
| Nationality: |  Canadian |
| Genres: | Non-fiction |
| Subjects: | Politics |
Charles Burchill Lynch, LL.D, O.C. (3 December 1919 – 21 July 1994) was a Canadian journalist and author.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Canadian parents, he moved with his parents to Saint John, New Brunswick when he was two weeks old. In 1936, he started his career in journalism with the Saint John Citizen and then moved on to the Saint John Telegraph-Journal followed by the Canadian Press in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Lynch was appointed Vancouver bureau chief of the British United Press in 1940. The following year, he was transferred to Toronto to assume the position of divisional manager.
In 1943, Lynch joined Reuters News Agency as a World War II correspondent. He was one of a small handfull of Canadian reporters to accompany troops ashore on D-Day[1]. Others included veteran correspondent Matthew Halton of the CBC, Ross Munro and William Stewart of the Canadian Press, Ralph Allen of the Globe and Mail and Marcel Ouimet for Radio-Canada, the CBC's French-language service.
Following the War, Lynch covered the first four months of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials for Reuters. [2]
He then moved with his family to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to become Reuters' chief South American correspondent. Following this, he became the news agency's chief Canadian correspondent and, finally, New York City Editor before leaving the news service in 1956 to become the CBC's United Nations correspondent. [3]
Lynch moved back to Canada in 1958 to assume the role of Ottawa Bureau Chief of Southam News. Lynch thrived as a journalist in Ottawa and by 1960 he was Chief of Southam.
Duing his time with Southam Lynch made a historic two-month trip to communist China in April and May, 1965. As a working journalist, Lynch sent home dispatches vividly describing his impressions of the country's politics and people under Chairman Mao Zedong. Lynch's uncensored dispatches appeared in Southam papers after making the voyage home by airmail. The trip is notable because of the fact that it was sanctioned by the Chinese government - almost unheard of for a journalist at the time - and the fact that it chronicles life in China from a Western perspective less than a year before the start of the Cultural Revolution. Lynch's dispatches were ultimately edited and compiled into what became the journalist's first book: China, One Fourth of the World, which became a Canadian best-seller. The book is now out of print.
In 1977, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada "for the vitality, insight and integrity he has shown during his forty years of reporting the news". [4]
In 1981 he was inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame. He was awarded an honourary doctorate of laws from Mount Allison University.
In 1984, he retired and became a freelance writer.
In 1998, the National Press Club of Canada established the Charles Lynch Award in his honour. The award is given out annually in recognition of a Canadian journalist's outstanding coverage of national issues.
Lynch was the father of Andrew Lynch, a notable publisher and journalist in the city of Victoria, British Columbia.
[edit] Selected bibliography
- China, One Fourth of the World (1965)
- You Can't Print That! (1983, ISBN 0-88830-245-2)
- Our Retiring Prime Minister (1983, ISBN 0-7704-1827-9)
- Race for the Rose: Election 1984 (1984, ISBN 0-458-98460-4)
- A Funny Way to Run a Country: Further Memoirs of a Political Voyeur (1988, ISBN 0-88830-294-0)
- The Lynch Mob: Stringing Up Our Prime Ministers (1988, ISBN 1-55013-108-7)
- Up from the Ashes: The Rideau Club Story (1990, ISBN 0-7766-0310-8)
- Fishing With Simon (1991, ISBN 0-13-318809-4)
