Mar­ion Kane was born in Mon­treal but spent her for­ma­tive years from age four to 19 in Lon­don, Eng­land. As a child, she reg­u­larly came home ask­ing for spam frit­ters like the ones served for lunch at school. Her mother, Ruth Schachter, a biol­ogy teacher and self-taught gourmet cook renowned for Euro­pean dishes like Beef Stroganoff and Linz­er­torte, claimed not to under­stand the con­cept and politely declined. Dur­ing her teenage years, Kane baked cheese­cakes from a recipe in her mother’s Joy Of Cook­ing and sold them to friends and teach­ers. Thus began her love of things culinary.

She returned to Canada in 1965 when her father, a phys­i­ol­o­gist and med­ical researcher, accepted a posi­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Alberta in Edmon­ton. Soon, she obtained degrees in Russ­ian, French and Edu­ca­tion. Jobs fol­lowed as a social worker, owner of a cloth­ing bou­tique, teacher, wait­ress and baker of apple pies which she sold to restau­rants. Her career as a food writer began in the mid-1970s after mov­ing to Toronto with John Kane, her hus­band at the time, and baby daugh­ter Esther. After free­lanc­ing for sev­eral years, she became food edi­tor at The Toronto Sun in 1983. In 1989, she accepted that posi­tion at the Toronto Star, which she held for 11 years. She then wrote a food col­umn called Dish which appeared in the week­end Star until August 2007.

Her claims to fame include host­ing a visit to Toronto in 1991 by Julia Child, with whom she became fast friends, and being invited for break­fast pre­pared by her famous men­tor at her Cam­bridge, Mass., home in 1999.

At Mar­ion Kane’s home with Julia Child

Photo Credit: Patti Gower, Toronto Star, 1991

Her three-hour lunch with Sophia Loren at Toronto eatery Trat­to­ria Gian­carlo, the bread pud­ding taste test she orches­trated in the Star’s test kitchen to hon­our pop­u­lar TV chef Emeril Lagasse and a humor­ous radio inter­view with Arthur Black fea­tur­ing the deep-fried Mars Bar are others.

Kane rel­ishes unusual oppor­tu­ni­ties as fod­der for her writ­ing. In 1993, she inter­viewed for­mer Mafia mem­ber and one-time cook for the New York Gam­bino clan “Joe Dogs” Ianuzzi from Amer­i­can parts unknown while he was under the wit­ness pro­tec­tion plan after turn­ing in sev­eral of his fel­low mob­sters. That story included excel­lent recipes from his small but tasty book The Mafia Cook­book (Simon & Schus­ter). In 1999, she pub­lished recipes from three Toronto chefs offer­ing their take on shepherd’s pie as a trib­ute to Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones while the band was in town to record an album. He liked this trea­tise on his favourite dish so much, he signed a copy.

Kane, a pop­ulist in her approach, believes food jour­nal­ism should be acces­si­ble, enter­tain­ing and edu­ca­tional. She also feels a respon­si­bil­ity to address seri­ous issues and reg­u­larly tack­les top­ics like hunger, home­less­ness, GM foods, organic farm­ing and nutri­tion. Food, she says, is a uni­ver­sal con­nec­tor. The beauty of her work is that it gives her access to chefs, cooks, grow­ers, read­ers and eaters of every colour, shape, age and background.

Kane belongs to the Asso­ci­a­tion of Food Jour­nal­ists and the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Cook­ing Pro­fes­sion­als. She has won three national awards for food writ­ing and has authored two cook­books, one at the Toronto Sun, Best Recipes Under The Sun (Collins, 1987), the other at the Toronto Star, The BEST of Food (Toronto Star, 1997). Her lat­est book, Dish, is a com­pi­la­tion of her favourite columns, paired with her best recipes. Although she has mas­tered dishes from many cuisines and is con­stantly sleuthing out new culi­nary expe­ri­ences, she has not yet dis­cov­ered the secret to mak­ing spam fritters.