Sue Johanson, beloved Canadian sex educator, dead at 93

Sue Johanson, the beloved Canadian broadcaster who in her golden years enraptured a generation with straightforward sex advice, is dead at 93, a representative confirmed to CBC News on Thursday.

Johanson died in a long-term care home in Thornhill, Ont., just north of Toronto, surrounded by her family, the representative said.

The broadcaster was best known for hosting the Canadian call-in radio and then television program Sunday Night Sex Show, which led to a successful U.S. spinoff called Talk Sex With Sue Johanson.

Born in Toronto, Johanson began her career as a nurse, receiving her training in Winnipeg. During the 1970s, she opened a birth control clinic at her daughter Jane’s high school and ran it for almost two decades.

WATCH | How Sue Johanson became the country’s leading sexpert: 

Sex education with Sue Johanson in 1986

37 years ago

Duration 2:53

On radio, on TV and on tours across Canada, the plain-spoken nurse uses humour to talk to her audiences about sex. Aired Oct. 3, 1986 on CBC’s The Journal.

Johanson’s Sunday Night Sex Show premiered as a live call-in program on Toronto radio in 1984, with a television version of the show airing on W Network from 1996 to 2005. The U.S. spinoff, Talk Sex With Sue Johanson, began in 2002 and concluded in 2008.

She offered callers advice on everything from how to use a sex toy and ways to spice things up in the bedroom, to navigating the taboos of the birds and the bees — always with her signature humour and candour.