‘Ottawa’ Capital Facts: Busting the myth of Paul Anka’s Doomed Love
In celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, the Citizen is rolling out one fact each day for 150 days until July 1, highlighting the odd, the fascinating and the important bits of Ottawa history you might not know about.
Paul Anka was a 16-year-old in Ottawa in 1957 when his song, Diana, became a worldwide hit, eventually selling 20 million copies. It was widely believed to be about his doomed love for one of his babysitters. Anka didn’t try very hard to discredit the story until he wrote his autobiography, My Way, in 2013. He and Diana Ayoub, the Ottawa woman who inspired Anka’s song, were friends — he calls her his “teen crush” in the book — but she was never his babysitter. In Anka’s telling: “The three-year difference in our ages made romance impossible. The only way to declare myself was through that song.” But in a 1991 Citizen interview, Ayoub said the two were only a year apart in age. ”Paul has no idea how much that song affected my life,” she said. “I got all the notoriety and none of the benefits.”
— Don Butler