Andrea Warner

Andrea Warner died on Sunday, September 27, 2026, in Vancouver at age 47, after nearly three years with endometrial cancer. Her husband Carlos announced the news on Instagram, writing that doctors and nurses made sure she was calm and not in pain and that family and countless friends were with her in her last days. She had a happy summer and felt better than she had in a long time before her health turned around Labour Day. Earlier that summer chemotherapy had stopped working and the cancer had begun to spread; hopes for another clinical trial depended on platelet counts her bloodwork could not consistently reach.

CBC Music published a staff farewell on October 2, 2026, inviting donations to Battered Women's Support Services and the Urban Native Youth Association. Exclaim!, ECW Press, That Eric Alper, Toronto Mike, Pickle Me This and others published tributes in the following days. Resting place and funeral arrangements have not been made public.

Andrea Warner was born and raised in East Vancouver, British Columbia, a settler on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Childhood Sundays were spent among the stock of her father's secondhand shop. On weeknights she wrote soapy teen novels by streetlight when she was supposed to be sleeping, an early sign of the storytelling life ahead.

Her father died when she was 17. Decades later she wrote about that grief through Bran Van 3000's song "Drinking in L.A.," describing how the track still sounded like permission and freedom after crushing loss. Exact birth date and birth year have not been published in obituaries; CBC Music and other tributes state that she was 47 when she died in 2026.

Warner completed a two-year journalism program at Langara College in Vancouver. During a summer break she interned in New York at Soap Opera Weekly, mostly transcribing interviews before writing pieces of her own. The following year she returned to visit friends and was offered the magazine's weekly horoscope column, which she wrote for about two or three years using a tarot deck.

She later taught journalism and writing to youth who had been victims or perpetrators of violence, an early example of the mentoring and platform-building that ran through her career.

Warner began freelancing in earnest around age 27 with film reviews for Vancouver's The Westender and the Charleston City Paper, then moved into culture features for Exclaim!, the Georgia Straight, Pitchfork and other outlets. She spent six years as a freelance theatre critic for the Georgia Straight and later contributed to Maclean's, the Literary Review of Canada and the Globe and Mail.

In April 2012 she joined CBC Music as an associate producer. She wrote hundreds of pieces that either challenged how Canadians thought about major artists or restored attention to musicians who had been neglected, from Deborah Cox and Loreena McKennitt to Sinead O'Connor, Loretta Lynn, Anne Murray and Ferron. She delivered weekly music columns on CBC Radio One's All Points West and Radio West, appeared on the Day 6 music panel, served on the Polaris Music Prize jury and co-programmed the Vancouver Podcast Festival.

For roughly a decade she co-hosted Pop This!, a weekly feminist pop culture podcast with Lisa Christiansen. Across radio, print and podcasts she became one of Canada's most recognisable feminist music critics.

Warner lived in Vancouver for essentially her whole life. She described herself as a settler on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories and used she/her pronouns. She was married to Carlos, who announced her death and described her final days with family and friends present. Whether she had children has not been made public.

She was a devoted Toronto Blue Jays fan. During cancer treatment she swam at outdoor pools whenever she could, visited Vancouver Island and went whale watching. Friends and colleagues repeatedly described her laugh, her absurd turns of phrase and her generosity with other writers' work.

Warner's criticism was openly feminist. In We Oughta Know and in interviews she argued that Canadian music history had been told through white male artists while women and Indigenous creators were sidelined, and she said she wanted to "take it all down." She pressed herself and her readers on the limits of white feminism, insisting liberation had to be tied to anti-racism, trans inclusivity, reproductive health care, size acceptance and an end to gender violence.

At a 2017 EMMA Talks event she warned against championing only what and who you already know without questioning bias and complicity. She believed popular culture could hold reverence and critique at once, and that loving a song or a film did not put it above hard questions. Death and remembrance mattered to her: at CBC Music she became the team's "obit queen," writing careful farewell essays and assembling each year's in memoriam for musicians who had died.

Warner's books and CBC Music writing shifted how many Canadian readers think about 1990s pop stars, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Susan Aglukark and the place of feminism in music criticism. Elaine Lui of LaineyGossip called her one of the best music journalists in Canada. ECW Press remembered her as a culture critic who loved the culture and uplifted others. Novelist Kerry Clare praised criticism that broadened instead of reduced, inviting people in rather than cancelling or stanning.

Younger journalists cited her as a model. Her Pop This! archive, radio columns and documentary work on Buffy Sainte-Marie remain public records of a critic who treated joy and justice as related crafts. Family-directed memorial donations to Battered Women's Support Services and the Urban Native Youth Association extend causes she supported in life.

Specific literary prize wins are not prominently listed in obituaries, though CBC Music described her books as award-winning and Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography was widely reported as a bestseller. Warner served on the Polaris Music Prize jury, including Heritage Prize judging, a mark of peer trust in Canadian music.

She was a featured speaker at EMMA Talks (2017), the Galiano Island Literary Festival (2019) and university and library events tied to her books. Peers at Exclaim!, CBC Music and ECW Press publicly honoured her craft and kindness after her death.

Books: We Oughta Know: How Four Women Ruled the '90s and Changed Canadian Music (Eternal Cavalier Press, 2015; expanded ECW Press edition, 2024); Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography (Greystone Books, September 25, 2018); Rise Up and Sing! Power, Protest, and Activism in Music (Greystone Books, 2023), illustrated by Louise Reimer; The Time of My Life: Dirty Dancing (ECW Press Pop Classics, 2024); Kihiani: A Memoir of Healing, co-authored with Susan Aglukark (HarperCollins Canada, September 2, 2025).

Film: co-writer and associate producer, Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On (2022).

Broadcast and podcast: CBC Music associate producer from 2012; CBC Radio columns and Day 6 panel; co-host of Pop This! for about a decade. Website: theandreawarner.com. Represented by Carolyn Forde at Transatlantic Agency.