J eanne Beker comes on our Zoom call with a wide smile and a friendly hello, sporting a black-and-white polka dot blouse and silver jewelry. I couldn’t see what designer clothes she was wearing from the waist down, but at the time, it didn’t occur to me to ask her. Truth be told, I was a little nervous to inter- view her, because she’s one of Canada’s most iconic and beloved broadcasters, with a career spanning nearly half a century. She helped pave the way for generations of Jewish journalists like who came after her. Women who weren’t all blonde hair and perky noses. Women like me. Beker, 71, was doing an interview for The CJN Daily from her Northumberland County farmhouse east of Toronto dubbed Chanteclair, which she bought in 2000 after a divorce from former Toronto radio personality Bob Magee.
in her ear. “His motto? ‘Don’t be afraid and never give up.’ And that’s totally what saw him and my mother through the war.” Beker says she also drew inspiration from people who reached out to share how breast cancer had impacted their lives—including when the endings were not so happy. “Whether it was their journey or their wives or their sisters or their mothers, but all of them were really giving me that whole cheer- leader boost,” she says. “They were all say- ing, ‘You’ve got this, just keep going, it’s gon- na be OK.’” And in mid-June 2023, after a year of under- going surgery, chemotherapy, the resulting hair loss, and side effects from the cancer fighting drugs, Beker was hooked up to an intravenous machine at the Princess Mar-
garet Hospital in To- ronto for her final in- fusion of Herceptin. She dutifully docu- mented her appoint- ment on that day— and, although it was a little hokey, Beker gamely stepped up to ring the clinic’s treatment bell (lit- erally, a bronze bell) to mark the end of that stage of her can- cer journey. “I’m going to miss all the angels here,
The wall behind her is adorned with a cari- cature of Beker in her younger years, showing striking, oversized eyes and her trademark long, black hair and bangs. She has short hair now after her breast can- cer treatment and the bangs are different, but Beker still uses that im- age as the profile photo on Instagram And while other high-profile Jewish Can-
“My dad always said to me ‘It’s very important how you dress because that’s the first thing that people see about you and that’s how they’re going to judge you right off the bat’.”
but in the meantime, I’m going to celebrate!” she exclaimed to her 55,000 social media followers. Beker handles all her own postings, too. She kicked off this summer by jetting off to Scot- land, visiting friends in Calgary, and hanging out with her musician daughter Joey O’Neil, who lives in Dawson City, Yukon. Joey crocheted the red string bracelet which her mother sports on her left wrist, under her watch. It’s an ancient Jewish tradition designed to ward off bad luck. Beker kept it on throughout her cancer journey: her two daughters wear their own. A similar talisman became part of her daily wardrobe when Beker was pregnant. (Bekky O’Neil, the older sister, lives 15 minutes away in Roseneath, Ont.). “My mother insisted that I tie a little red rib- bon on my bra strap, which I wore the entire duration of both pregnancies.” Beker hosts a weekly fashion program Style Matters on the TSC home-shopping channel across Canada. The eighth season begins
adian women in broadcasting have survived breast cancer in recent years—including Dr. Marla Shapiro and Sandie Rinaldo—they weren’t as public about their odyssey. Beker’s social media audience has nearly tripled in the year since she decided to go public and to use her high profile to document the diagnosis. The posts started right after the fateful phone call from her doctor in June 2022, after a routine mammogram found a mass in her breast. “And it was, like, the biggest shock of all be- cause my mother never had breast cancer, my sister didn’t have breast cancer. (She doesn’t know if her grandmothers did, since they were murdered in the Holocaust.) Beker credits her late father Joseph’s un- wavering wartime attitude for helping her get through it. He survived serving in the Polish army, internment in the ghetto, and later, be- ing on the run with his bride, Bronia. To evade the Nazis, her parents hid in a series of attics, and sheltered in earthen bunkers beneath farms. His daughter could feel him whispering
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