Sue Johanson, beloved Canadian sex educator, dies aged 93 as fans pay tribute to ‘trailblazer’ sex guru

Canadian sex educator and broadcaster Sue Johanson has died at the age of 93.

A representative confirmed to CBC News on Thursday 29 June that the iconic sex expert died in a long-term care home in Thornhill, Ontario, surrounded by loved ones.

Sue Johanson gained prominence with her call-in radio show and Canadian television programme, Sunday Night Sex Show. Following the show’s success, she led a US spinoff called Talk Sex with Sue Johanson from 2002 to 2008.

Throughout her career, Johanson helped destigmatise sex by offering callers advice on everything from sex toys to fetishes. She began as a nurse, opening a birth control clinic at her daughter’s Toronto high school in 1970 – just one year after birth control became legal in Canada.

She travelled throughout Ontario, offering sex education in schools, before her radio show hit the airwaves. Her books – Talk Sex: Answers to Questions You Can’t Ask Your Parents, Sex Is Perfectly Natural but Not Naturally Perfect, and Sex, Sex, and More Sex – helped teach an entire generation about safe sexual practices.

Following the news of her passing, many fans took to social media to pay tribute to the iconic sex expert. Lisa Rideout, the director of a 2022 documentary on Johanson titled Sex With Sue, honoured Johanson’s legacy with a touching Instagram post.

“Sue was an incredible, unstoppable force. She paved the way for how we talk about sex and sexuality today, unafraid of shattering taboos and toppling conservative viewpoints,” Rideout wrote. “Her reach wasn’t just on stage, whether walking down the street or sitting in a restaurant Sue would stop what she was doing to have meaningful conversations with anyone who wanted to talk to her, and there were plenty.”

Meanwhile on Twitter, sex advice columnist Dan Savage wrote: “She was a giant, and had such a positive impact on the lives of so many people.”

“A loss for Canada on a par with Gordon Lightfoot,” another person tweeted. “She was a teacher and a trailblazer.”

“Sue Johanson raised a generation of kids to be comfortable talking about safe sex with their partners and I’m so grateful we had that,” a third individual said.

Even fellow Canadian Drake paid tribute to Johanson. The rapper called the sex educator, who appeared in two episodes of Degrassi Junior High and two episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generation, the “goat” on his Instagram Story and shared a photo of her book cover, Sex Is Perfectly Natural but Not Naturally Perfect.

Amidst the success of Talk Sex with Sue Johanson, she became a favourite guest amongst late-night talk shows in the US. Johanson made several appearances on the Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien – often making the male hosts uncomfortable with her casual discussions of sex.

While chatting with David Letterman in 2003, she gave the audience a lesson on the anatomy of female pleasure, saying: “What people don’t realise is that penis size does not matter, because the top two-thirds of the vagina has no nerve endings, there’s nobody home up there.”

She also made host Conan O’Brien and actor Ray Romano uneasy in 2006, with her candid confessions about sex toys.

In 2001, Johanson’s work educating and informing the public about birth control and sexual health earned her Canada’s second highest civilian honour, the Order of Canada, for being “a strong, successful advocate for sex education”.