Clyde Gilmour

Gilmour, Clyde

Clyde Gilmour. Critic, broadcaster, b Calgary 8 Jun 1912, d Toronto 7 Nov 1997; honorary LL D (McMaster) 1976. He worked on various newspapers in western Canada and served in the navy as news correspondent, before contributing film reviews to CBC Vancouver 1947-54 and record columns to Mayfair 1947-52. He was movie critic for the Vancouver Sun 1949-54, Maclean's 1950-4, CBC radio ('Critically Speaking') 1954-64, and the Toronto Telegram 1954-71. He joined the Toronto Star as movie critic in 1971. During his years with the Sun and the Telegram he also was a record columnist for each of those newspapers, and in 1973 he began writing record reviews for the magazine Sound. In 1956 he initiated CBC radio's popular 'Gilmour's Albums,' a weekly one-hour program of records drawn from his own wide-ranging collection. The eclectic program, broadcast 52 weeks a year with no holidays or re-runs, had run over 40 years by June 1997 when Gilmour retired and the show ceased. 'Gilmour's Albums' was the longest-running network radio music show in CBC history, as well as the network's highest-rated music show, with a listenership of 500,000. Gilmour often acknowledged his wife, the former Barbara Donald (d 1995), whom he married in 1947, as the show's "silent partner"; she conducted research and answered mail. For his journalistic work and particularly for this 'program of recorded music ... heard with delight by a national audience,' Gilmour was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1975. He was enrolled in the Canadian News Hall of Fame in 1990. Gilmour's 10,000 albums, 4,000 CDs, over 2,000 radio scripts, and other personal items are held by the CBC music library in Toronto.