This arti­cle appeared in the Toronto Star as the obit­u­ary for Julia Child a week after her death in Cal­i­for­nia on August 14, 2004, at age 92.

Mar­ion Kane and Julia Child in April 1991 at Marion’s home in Kens­ing­ton Market

My dear friend Julia Child

The first meet­ing with my mag­nif­i­cent men­tor and dear friend Julia Child began inaus­pi­ciously.
The date was March 31, 1991. The place: Toronto Pear­son Inter­na­tional Air­port.
I was a bun­dle of nerves when I arrived at the appointed time to wel­come North America’s cel­e­brated cui­sine queen. The care­fully orches­trated plan was to accom­pany her to the Four Sea­sons Hotel, Yorkville, with a brief stop at my home for snacks and a glass of wine.
Child, then 78, was in good health and brim­ming with energy. She had already expressed enthu­si­asm for the fol­low­ing day’s action-packed sched­ule. Dubbed April Food Day, it included a book sign­ing at The Cook­book Store, a glitzy lunch with Toronto’s movers and shak­ers pre­pared by five of our city’s top chefs fol­lowed by a cook­ing demo by her at George Brown Col­lege.
This highly antic­i­pated one-day visit, hosted by The Toronto Star, was the result of a phone inter­view ear­lier that year for an arti­cle about famous food­ies and their favourite home-cooked meal. I recall Child cit­ing Boeuf Bour­guignon, Pota­toes Anna and “a nice pear with cheese for dessert.”
Then, in typ­i­cal fash­ion, she turned the tables, ques­tion­ing me about my job and life in Toronto.
I asked if she’d ever been here. Her response: “No one’s invited me.” A quick visit to my publisher’s office was fol­lowed by a return call to Child. She imme­di­ately accepted the Star’s offer to bring her here and play host.
At Pearson’s arrivals area, I began to panic. I was obvi­ously at the wrong gate. Child was nowhere to be seen.
Sud­denly, I turned around and there she was. Totally unmis­tak­able, more than 6 feet tall, though slightly stooped, and fer­ret­ing through her purse for my phone num­ber.
She was trav­el­ling alone – no han­dlers, no entourage, not even her trusty assis­tant Stephanie Hersh with whom I’d dis­cussed details of this trip. Breezily, Child brushed off my pro­fuse apolo­gies and jaun­tily joined me in the limo, one small travel bag in hand.
Soon we were cheer­fully shar­ing Asian-inspired munchies and a bot­tle of Alsace Ries­ling at my kitchen table.
Child pulled out her pow­der com­pact when the Star photographer’s flash began to pop — a momen­tary inter­rup­tion between ques­tions about me, my two daugh­ters and Cana­dian food.
That night, we both stayed at the hotel, Child in a pent­house suite, I on a lower floor. Before head­ing to her room, my new buddy invited me to join her for break­fast.
That morn­ing, I made an embar­rass­ing con­fes­sion: I had a pho­bia of being alone in ele­va­tors (sev­eral years of psy­chother­apy later, this is now cured) and was stumped about reach­ing her top-floor abode.
In min­utes, Child was at my door. As the two of us made our ascent, she offered gen­tly in a moth­erly tone, “You know dear, you should ask your daugh­ter to help with your fear. I’m sure she could.” This lovely woman had remem­bered our con­ver­sa­tion about my elder off­spring Esther, now a full-fledged psy­chother­a­pist, who was study­ing psy­chol­ogy.
We ate, then Child excused her­self to phone her beloved hus­band Paul who was in a nurs­ing home after suf­fer­ing sev­eral strokes. “He’s got the dwin­dles,” she’d told me the day before.
The affec­tion was pal­pa­ble in her inim­itable voice com­ing from the other room. “I’m up in Canada, dear – with the heavy book,” she told him, a ref­er­ence to the hefty tome which she con­sid­ered her defin­i­tive work:The Way To Cook (Knopf).
That morn­ing, Child care­fully, calmly and car­ingly signed books for more than 800 excited fans.
After a mag­nif­i­cent lunch at the hotel, she stood up to speak, rav­ing about the food and Reserve IceWine from Inniskillin. “I love Toronto; you’re a real food town,” she said to a table of beam­ing faces. “It’s a shame we don’t know more about you in the U.S. You should do more P.R.”
Dur­ing the meal, I over­heard Dave Nichol, then Loblaws high-profile pres­i­dent, ask­ing Child to put her stamp of approval on his pop­u­lar choco­late chip cook­ies. “I don’t endorse things,” she told him kindly but firmly. “It destroys your cred­i­bil­ity.”
How­ever, she was a prac­ti­cal soul and later wrote ask­ing me how to con­tact “that wealthy super­mar­ket exec­u­tive” so she could request finan­cial sup­port for her pet project, the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Wine and Food.
As we stood to leave, Child asked me to bring her to the kitchen to meet the chefs. I’ll never for­get their faces as we approached the glassed-in chef’s office where all five were chew­ing on baguettes stuffed with salami. Nor their joy as she heartily shook hands and sin­cerely thanked each one.
After her stel­lar demo per­for­mance at George Brown, ham­pered by glitches with some blunt knives, we returned to our hotel. I was a tad pooped, though high on life. Child, full of vim and vigour, felt like a bite to eat so we sat down in the lobby lounge.
She requested two favourite foods from the moth­erly wait­ress who did not rec­og­nize the celebrity guest: a large, dry mar­tini on the rocks in a big wine glass with a twist of lemon and a ham­burger, rare to medium-rare.
As Child devoured the burger, which was extremely well-done, I ven­tured, “How is it?” “Edi­ble,” came the reply. “And the mar­tini?” I asked with trep­i­da­tion. Child’s answer was short and sweet: “Per­fect!”
I wrote about this and heard after­wards that heads had rolled at the hotel. I’m sure Child would have been upset. Food was impor­tant to her but so were peo­ple.
This pro­lific, undaunt­able woman returned to Toronto three more times over the years, in each case to pro­mote a book. Dur­ing that time, we kept in touch by let­ter, occa­sion­ally by phone and fre­quently by e-mail.
In 1994, I talked with her at CBC’s down­town head­quar­ters about her lat­est book, Bak­ing With Julia (Mor­row). I’d closed my note­book and put down my pen when Child turned her lovely round face to me.
“So Mar­ion, how’s your love life?” she asked, know­ing I was sin­gle from pre­vi­ous chats. I mum­bled some­thing about things being bleak. “How’s yours?” I piped up, know­ing she was now a widow. “I had a beau but he died,” came the matter-of-fact reply. She saw I was stuck for words and saved the day by adding, “At my age, it hap­pens.”
In 1999, I went to Cam­bridge, Mass., to visit fam­ily. Child imme­di­ately invited me for break­fast at her beau­ti­ful Vic­to­rian home near Har­vard Square.
You can imag­ine how mag­i­cal it was to sit in her cozy, sunny kitchen decked with cop­per pans eat­ing creamy scram­bled eggs and sip­ping strong cof­fee made by her own fair hand.
Four years ago, that kitchen was trans­ferred intact to the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion when Child moved, as she had long planned, to an assisted-living home not far from Santa Bar­bara in Cal­i­for­nia.
I knew my friend was not recov­er­ing well from knee replace­ment surgery almost two years ago. In fact, there were at least 20 e-mails from Hersh to this effect. Still, Child and I con­tin­ued to dis­cuss food includ­ing the best way to make Tarte Tatin for which she recently sent two recipes clipped from news­pa­pers.
I received an e-mail in May say­ing how much she enjoyed lunch in the gar­den under the apri­cot, fig and avo­cado trees. Also, that she hoped our paths would soon cross.
So it was a shock to hear she’d died in her sleep on August 13, news I received while on hol­i­day in Eng­land. When I returned, there were calls from media who wanted to inter­view me but sev­eral chef friends just wanted to talk.
“I watched her make those Pears in Puff Pas­try at George Brown,” said Joanne Yolles, pas­try chef at Pan­gaea. “I made it the next day and have been using her recipe ever since.”
Donna Dooher, co-owner of Mil­dred Pierce Restau­rant and The Cook­works, keeps Child’s biog­ra­phy beside her bed. “She loved peo­ple and knew cook­ing is the best way of show­ing your love,” says Dooher. “She was very unpre­ten­tious and brought joy to cook­ing.”
I cher­ish these words from Hersh, who included them in a beau­ti­fully poignant mes­sage sent to those on Child’s e-mail list just after her death.
“Julia said that ‘When you die, you’re dead; and that’s the end. There isn’t any­thing else.’ But I know in my heart that she was hap­pily sur­prised to be wrong. And I am sure she is eat­ing an In-N-Out burger with Paul on the beach sur­rounded by friends and fam­ily and Escoffier who is undoubt­edly intrigued with the burger.”
Child once said, “Cook­ing is the best work because you can eat the results.” I’ll think of that when I pre­pare, then savour her unequalled Cheese Souf­fle, Food Proces­sor Pas­try, Salade Nicoise and Shrimp Sauteed with Lemon, Gar­lic and Herbs.
I’ll also rel­ish the advice she offered young peo­ple when I inter­viewed her a cou­ple of years ago by phone. “They should get into the food busi­ness. They’ll join a won­der­ful group of friends and be part of one big fam­ily.” Then she added, “After all, Mar­ion, that’s how I met you.”
There will never be another Julia Child. She was one of a kind. Charis­matic, funny, clever, a class act and the epit­ome of the Jew­ish word “men­sch.”
Dear Julia, as a fel­low athe­ist, I hope you’re wrong about death.
As a fel­low foodie, I pray the burger you’re eat­ing on that beach is medium to medium-rare and has a large, dry mar­tini on the rocks to wash it down.