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Barbara Frum: A Daughter's Memoir
The death of Barbara Frum stunned and sorrowed Canadians. After a heroic - and very private - 18-year battle with leukemia, she left behind a country that loved, and respected her. As an interviewer for CBC Radio's As It Happens and CBC TV's The Journal , she was able to go one-on-one with anyone. Now her daughter, Linda, shows us the woman behind the microphone. This is the story of a family and how they not only coped with Barbara's fatal disease, but made the best of it, living every day to its fullest. The lessons learned from Barbara Frum will inspire and move all those who have missed her so much.
287 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 8, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 25, 2023
A very lovely memoir of a person who the nation loved. Well worth reading.
February 9, 2021
Four years after Barbara Frum’s death from leukemia at the age of fifty-four, her daughter Linda published a memoir about her mother, partly as a way to handle her own personal grief but also as a tribute to her mother’s eighteen-year long fight with leukemia. Barbara was an intensely private person and kept her illness secret, revealing her medical condition to her daughter when she was fifteen and had already been fighting it for five years. Only a small group of friends and family knew about her illness so many were shocked when her death was announced in March of 1992.
Barbara Frum was a well-known and respected journalist with the CBC, considered a pioneer in her field. She first came to the attention of many Canadians as an interviewer for the nightly CBC radio newsmagazine program “As It Happens”, one of the CBC’s most popular programs. During that time, she demonstrated her skills as a tough, well-informer interviewer who was always well prepared and ready to ask the difficult questions. Later she gained an even higher profile on the CBC-TV news program “The Journal”.
Linda Frum covers all the details of a biography readers expect, describing her mother’s early life in Niagara Falls where her father owned a department store, the period when she dated and later married Murray Frum a Toronto dentist who became a successful real estate developer and her Mother’s love of gardening and home renovations. She describes her mother’s love of coffee, her adoration of “Diva” the pet poodle she brought to work every day at the CBC and her work habits, those of an overachiever. Barbara was highly intelligent, intensely ambitious and very disciplined, attributes honed even further by the knowledge of her own pressing mortality. Linda came to understand how one way her mother fought her disease was by being successful in her career, but hints that meant she may not have given as much time to her children as they wanted and needed.
Where the book falters is Linda’s attempt to describe her mother’s importance in the world of Canadian journalism and Barbara’s uneasy relationship with feminism in shaping that role. Linda is just too close to the subject matter to make that assessment. It needs to be done by an independent expert in journalism.
The best part of the book describes the difficult tug of war Linda and her mother experienced trying to care for and love one another while preparing for the end they both knew would come, a pull between loving someone intensely in the time available to them and preparing for a final separation from each other. Without the ability of hematologists to determine when that end would come and Barbara’s determination to live, the Frums were unable to recognize her final decline and never quite prepared for the end. After two decades of living with the disease, Barbara Frum had never made her wishes known for what should happen after her death known, so they were left hoping what they did was what Barbara wanted. It was almost as if by preparing for her funeral, Barbara Frum accepted she could not outrun the disease, something she could not completely embrace while she was fighting it.
Linda Frum has moved on in her life, married, had twins and is now divorced, but has struggled coping with her mother’s death. She has done well penning this memoir of a mother daughter relationship, but another book is still waiting to be written, the one that details Barbara Frum’s career and her place in Canadian journalism.
Barbara Frum was a well-known and respected journalist with the CBC, considered a pioneer in her field. She first came to the attention of many Canadians as an interviewer for the nightly CBC radio newsmagazine program “As It Happens”, one of the CBC’s most popular programs. During that time, she demonstrated her skills as a tough, well-informer interviewer who was always well prepared and ready to ask the difficult questions. Later she gained an even higher profile on the CBC-TV news program “The Journal”.
Linda Frum covers all the details of a biography readers expect, describing her mother’s early life in Niagara Falls where her father owned a department store, the period when she dated and later married Murray Frum a Toronto dentist who became a successful real estate developer and her Mother’s love of gardening and home renovations. She describes her mother’s love of coffee, her adoration of “Diva” the pet poodle she brought to work every day at the CBC and her work habits, those of an overachiever. Barbara was highly intelligent, intensely ambitious and very disciplined, attributes honed even further by the knowledge of her own pressing mortality. Linda came to understand how one way her mother fought her disease was by being successful in her career, but hints that meant she may not have given as much time to her children as they wanted and needed.
Where the book falters is Linda’s attempt to describe her mother’s importance in the world of Canadian journalism and Barbara’s uneasy relationship with feminism in shaping that role. Linda is just too close to the subject matter to make that assessment. It needs to be done by an independent expert in journalism.
The best part of the book describes the difficult tug of war Linda and her mother experienced trying to care for and love one another while preparing for the end they both knew would come, a pull between loving someone intensely in the time available to them and preparing for a final separation from each other. Without the ability of hematologists to determine when that end would come and Barbara’s determination to live, the Frums were unable to recognize her final decline and never quite prepared for the end. After two decades of living with the disease, Barbara Frum had never made her wishes known for what should happen after her death known, so they were left hoping what they did was what Barbara wanted. It was almost as if by preparing for her funeral, Barbara Frum accepted she could not outrun the disease, something she could not completely embrace while she was fighting it.
Linda Frum has moved on in her life, married, had twins and is now divorced, but has struggled coping with her mother’s death. She has done well penning this memoir of a mother daughter relationship, but another book is still waiting to be written, the one that details Barbara Frum’s career and her place in Canadian journalism.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews