CHML’s ‘Mayor of the Morning’ is doing well, years after cancer scare

Years after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, Hamilton’s longtime “Mayor of the Morning” is still going strong.

Iconic CHML morning show host Paul Hanover is living at Shalom Village in West Hamilton with his wife Helen, four years after he was told that he had pancreatic cancer.

Doctors had given the radio legend about a year to live when he was first diagnosed in March 2016, but his son Ian Yanover says it turns out that Paul didn’t have cancer.

“The doctor called it a thousand to one shot, some called it a million to one shot,” Yanover said. “The diagnosis mimicked pancreatic cancer perfectly.”

Yanover says they decided to look at various treatment options and the third doctor they visited with performed further tests, including blood tests and x-rays, and said, “This really doesn’t look right.”

“He said the tumour is shrinking and the blood doesn’t look right for pancreatic cancer,” Yanover recalls hearing from their visit with the third doctor.

Yanover says the doctors discovered that his father had contracted an infection that mimics how pancreatic cancer presents itself, and the infection cleared up on its own.

“We were all shocked, surprised, delighted,” Yanover said. “Dad was a little taken aback” because he had said his goodbyes and had come to terms with it.

Yanover adds Paul and Helen are doing great, even after the coronavirus pandemic swept across Canada and into many long-term care facilities this spring and summer.

“He’s healthy, he works out when he can, goes for walks outside,” said Yanover, adding that his father is in “pretty good shape.

Hanover, who began his illustrious radio career at CHML in the 1940s, retired in 1991.