Fearless, hilarious, brilliant and offbeat

Globe-trotting writer was a journalist, advertising executve, jingle creator, film researcher and ‘serial marrier’

Just days before Toronto writer Susan Kastner succumbed to a cruel, unrelenting disease, a very Susan Kastner thing happened.

She was published in the Nov. 21 issue of Neurology, a prestigious peer-reviewed research journal. But far from clinical commentary, A Marxist Exegesis of ALS is a humanizing and humourous take on a body’s betrayal. At times a conversation between a brain, a hand and an epiglottis, the essay is as singular as Kastner was herself.

The former Toronto Star columnist died at home on Nov. 24 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. She was 84.

“That she should get such an offbeat piece in a publication that is going to be read and taken seriously by thousands of neurologists is quite wonderful,” said her only child, filmmaker Jamie Kastner, 50.

It was “such an unconventional last twist,” he added, befitting one so unconventional.

Susan Kastner was a writer, but also a journalist, an advertising executive, a jingle writer, an author and a documentary researcher. She lived in London, Paris and Italy, but ultimately called Toronto home.

Her social orbit included William Gardner Smith. She interviewed the Beatles and Frank Sinatra, and as a musician she opened for Bill Cosby at Toronto’s Purple Onion “loooong before either he or I were notorious,” she once said.

Her rivalries were both friendly — with New York Post colleague Nora Ephron — and not so friendly — with former university pal Barbara Amiel.

She was a “serial marrier,” a single mother and a doting grandmother of three.

Jamie Kastner, who never knew his father, said it was only in a recent heart-to-heart with his mother that he discovered she had been married five times, not four. “Unfortunately she got sick, or there would have been more,” he said. “Believe me, there were suitors showing up during her illness, and I mean new ones.

“She was understandably fascinating to men. She was a great beauty, but she was also so brilliant and funny; she was political and she wasn’t pretentious. She was a rare combination.”

Her story began in 1939 in Toronto. She was born to Rose, a writer and editor, and Martin, a sculptor and artist. The Kastner home was fun and creative, an incubator for Susan and her artistic siblings: her late brothers, Peter, an actor, and John, a documentary filmmaker, as well as sister Kathy, an entertainment reporter turned entrepreneur and writer.

It was also the site of legendary parties, attracting the likes of Pierre Berton and Leonard Cohen, who allegedly once proposed to Susan, offering to rewrite “Suzanne” in her honour.

“The (Kastners) were colourful and different, and people were intrigued,” said Jamie, who noted his mother would say they wound up in tony Forest Hill, but were not of Forest Hill. “They were welcomed into society, but they never took themselves or society that seriously, and never stopped poking fun at either.”

Kastner attended Forest Hill Collegiate and later studied English at the University of Toronto. She didn’t graduate, but made her mark at U of T in another way: after a “beatnik for hire” ad was placed as a joke in the university newspaper, Kastner took on the persona, playing the bongos and reciting the works of A.A. Milne as though they was deep beatnik poetry. The “Today” show heard about the stunt and flew Kastner down to New York to appear on the show.

“It firmly established the fearless, hilarious, offbeat and brilliant person she continued to be for the rest of her life,” said Jamie.

Her career took her around the world, including to Paris where she worked for Agence France-Presse and the U.S. where she reported for the New York Post. She worked in advertising for a decade and wrote for the Globe, the CBC and had two stints at the Toronto Star doing features, profiles and columns.

“When the Sunday Star was born (in 1977), I was made editor of the People section, and Susan was my only staff,” said Dinah Arthur who remained a close friend. “She was all I needed.

“There was always a lot of humour and a lot of heart in everything she wrote.”

Humour, was “at the core of her particular genius,” said Jamie. “It wasn’t just ‘ha ha’ humour, although it was that, too. But it was a wry, unique worldview humour where things are turned on their head.”

Former star columnist Antonia Zerbisias also admired Kastner’s wit, but more so her fearlessness.

She was understandably fascinating to men. She was a great beauty, but she was also so brilliant and funny; she was political and she wasn’t pretentious. She was a rare

combination. JAMIE KASTNER ABOUT HIS MOTHER

“She didn’t care who she pissed off. She was proud of pissing off the rich and the famous and the boldface.”

When Kastner, who took jabs at Amiel in print, discovered she was listed as an “Enemy” in her old university pal’s 2020 memoir, “she took it as a badge of honour, but didn’t care enough about it to buy the book,” said Jamie.

In recent years, Kastner, who had initially retired to Italy but returned to Toronto following her last divorce, lived with her son and his family in the east end. “She and I always had an enormous amount of fun together and a very simpatico relationship,” said Jamie.

In 2022, Kastner was diagnosed with late onset ALS. And yet, her son said, she continued to remain upbeat.

“It was so brutal to see this happen to someone who was such a brilliant communicator, but even up to the end, she was still herself.”