Sylvia Murphy (September 24, 1931 – February 24, 2021) was a Canadian singer who was popular on radio and television programs on the CBC from 1949 to 1964.

Biography

She was the oldest child of Celia (née Zoddickson) and John Murphy. Her mother was from a Belarusian Jewish family and her father was of Irish Catholic descent, but both were natives of

Liverpool, England Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

. They met in Montreal after both emigrated there separately. Murphy got her start in nightclubs, and then was the featured singer on the radio programs ''Coca-Cola Refreshment Time'' and ''Club O'Connor'' with

Billy O'Connor ''The Billy O'Connor Show'' was a Canadian variety television series which aired on CBC Television from 1954 to 1956. Premise Billy O'Connor, a jazz musician, hosted this series with a small house band - Vic Centro (accordion), Kenny Gill (gui ...

. She moved to television with a break on '' Cross-Canada Hit Parade'' and later became the singer for Jack Kane's Orchestra on the ''Jack Kane Show'', ''Music Makers'' and ''Music '60''. She was also a regular performer on the ''

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Hour''. She was married to

Charles Templeton Charles Bradley Templeton (October 7, 1915 – June 7, 2001) was a Canadian media figure and a former Christian evangelist. Known in the 1940s and 1950s as a leading evangelist, he became an agnostic and later embraced atheism after strugg ...

. Her children include comic-book artist

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; internet entrepreneur

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; TV host and director Deborah Burgess; and prominent tax attorney Michael Templeton, a partner at

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. She later married William C. Tate, GM of Garrett Manufacturing Limited, a leading aerospace manufacturer. Murphy died on February 24, 2021, after contracting

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

during the

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. She was 89.

References

External links

Sylvia Murphy YouTube Channel
Canadian women jazz singers Musicians from Montreal Musicians from Toronto 1931 births 2021 deaths Anglophone Quebec people Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada Canadian people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Canadian people of Irish descent {{Jazz-singer-stub