Canada has lost a TV legend.
Sue Johanson, who dished out sex advice for decades as host of the Canadian call-in radio-turned-TV program Sunday Night Sex Show and its U.S. spinoff Talk Sex With Sue Johanson, died at age 93 in a long-term care home near her native Toronto, surrounded by her family, her rep told CBC June 29.
"She was a groundbreaker pioneer trooper. And she broke all the rules. And it was fabulous," her daughter Jane Johanson told CBC radio host Nil Köksal in an interview that day. "She never brushed people aside. She treated everyone absolutely the same. She was never judgmental, nor was she condescending or disapproving of any question that came her way."
Johanson's daughter continued, "It didn't matter who you were, what your sexual preference was, how you identified, what you might be dealing with in terms of the time of AIDS — like, she embraced everybody and who they were. And that just...made me so proud. We are so proud of our dear Sue, my mom."
Before going into broadcasting, Johanson began a career as a registered nurse. She opened a birth control clinic at a Toronto high school in 1970 after a friend of one of her two daughters thought she was pregnant and sought her help. She ultimately ran the facility for 18 years, according to The New York Times.
Sunday Night Sex Show premiered on Toronto radio in 1984 and its TV adaptation premiered in 1996 on the W Network and aired until 2005. Meanwhile, Talk Sex With Sue Johanson debuted in 2002 on the Oxygen channel and ended its run in 2008.
In the '80s, Johanson, a mom of three, also played a fictional version of herself on two episodes of Degrassi Junior High, reprising her role for a pair of episodes on the revival series Degrassi: The Next Generation in the early aughts.
Johanson also occasionally appeared as a guest on U.S. talk shows. In 2006, she debunked some "common myths" about sex while being interviewed on Late Night With Conan O'Brien. "Bigger is not better," she told Conan O'Brien. "Penis size does not matter."
She also told him that for women, orgasms are "grossly overrated," adding, "The whole idea that females are going to have this cataclysmic, earth-shattering, 10-on-the-Richter-scale orgasm every time they have sex, nuh-uh, not going to happen."
O'Brien then joked, "Uh, yes, it will," to which Johanson responded, "Oh, you wish!"