Barbara Frum - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Frum died of chronic leukemia on March 26, 1992. The illness had been first diagnosed in 1974, but only a small circle of family and friends knew about it. On the evening of her death, virtually the entire broadcasts of both The National and The Journal were a tribute to her and a retrospective of her career. Among the many tributes was an editorial cartoon depicting her at the gates of Heaven with a reporter's notebook, insisting on interviewing God. Several other editorial cartoons simply depicted The Journal's set with an empty anchor chair.

Following her death, instead of hiring a new host for The Journal the CBC radically revamped its entire approach to news programming, The National and The Journal were merged into a new program called Prime Time News. The atrium in the CBC Centre in Toronto was named 'Barbara Frum Atrium' in her honour.

The Toronto Public Library branch, located at 20 Covington Rd in a largely Jewish neighborhood, donated by Murray Frum, was opened shortly after Frum's death, and named 'Barbara Frum Library' in her honour. Frum was in the foreground on the Canadian stamp honouring CBC in 1999, a television biography, “The Life and Times of Barbara Frum”, was broadcast on CBC in 2002, and a day lily has been named the 'Barbara Frum Day Lily' in recognition of her enthusiasm for gardening.

Frum's daughter Linda, a conservative author and journalist, wrote a best-selling biography of her mother in 1996. She was appointed to the Senate of Canada as a Conservative by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in August 2009. Frum's son, David, is a political journalist and author of several books. He collaborated with others in coining the phrase "Axis of Evil" while a speech writer for George W. Bush. Frum's adopted son Matthew, a First Nations child whom the Frums adopted in the 1960s during the so-called Sixties Scoop, had problems as a teenager, and ultimately reclaimed his aboriginal roots and renewed contact with his birth parents.