Barbara Frum

Details

Inductee: Barbara Frum

Year inducted: 2008

About:

Barbara was born in Niagara Falls, New York on September 8,1937. She grew up in Niagara Falls, Canada.
Barbara’s father owned Rosberg’s Department Store.

Barbara was educated at the University of Toronto. After graduation she worked as a radio commentator and magazine writer. She quickly branched out into print writing articles for the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star and briefly for television, but radio was where she became recognized on “As it Happens”, a new and innovative newsmagazine show on CBC radio. Barbara’s skills as a tough, incisive and well-informed interviewer quickly made the program one of CBC Radio’s most popular and enduring programs (it still airs today, in virtually the same format), and she continued to host until 1981.

In 1981 CBC television created the Journal, a newsmagazine series that would follow the National each night at 10:22 p.m, Barbara and Mary Lou Finlay were hired as the show’s hosts. Frum became the sole host of the program and interviewed many notable people, including British PM Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela.

Throughout her career Barbara won many prestigious awards including, National Press Club of Canada Award for Outstanding Contribution to Canadian Journalism, and Woman of the Year in the literature arts and education category, the Order of Canada, numerous Gemini Awards and a library is named in her honour.

Barbara died on March 26, 1992, of leukemia.