Diana Drew nearly lost her voice to cancer.

Now she’s singing again, writes Mike Strobel

Let's close our eyes and make our own paradise
Little we know of it,still we can try
To make a go of it
- Let's Fall in Love

THE STAGE lights come up. They sparkle in her sky-blue eyes. Two hundred faces turn to her, but they are a blur in the glare. Some know her story, most do not. You cannot see the scar on her throat, unless you look real close. She knows her husband stands near the back of the ballroom, mouth tight, eyes fixed on the stage. The piano begins behind her, softly, lazily. "Here goes nothing." She draws a deep breath, steps to the front and begins to sing ...

"I love Billy Holiday," Diana tells me. "Not just because she had such a beautiful voice, but because you can hear her life in it. No bubblegum, no toffee. You can hear that lady has gone through stuff."

We are talking over coffee in the High Note lounge at the Sheraton Parkway in Markham . Drew, 43, did a six-month gig here once. Played guitar, sang blues, jazz, classical, lounge, rock, whatever they wanted, with the pool as a backdrop. She has played a lot of places. Turned pro at 19, when she was Diana Nahr, at a Mississauga truck stop, that powerful-sultry voice soaring over rows of sleepy drivers. She sang O-Canada at the SkyDome for the Jays and Raptors and at the Gardens for the Leafs. She fended off amorous drunks at Nag's Head North. She worked fairs, festivals, the Ex. There was a little TV, including a Nashville Network spot. And countless hotels and bars, mostly across the top of Toronto ... "I got pretty cynical, night after night, cranking it out. And I didn't think much of men for a long time." She could pump out country as Deanna and the Northern Drawls or do a gig of flamenco guitar. She taught singing too.

And she taught, starting the Diana Drew Singing Studio 15 years ago. "It's always been in my blood. My dad (Bill Nahr) was on Broadway and I've been singing since I was seven." She was halfway through a demo CD, in December 2000, when routine surgery found cancer in her thyroid.

They cut it out, plus 35 lymph nodes. She healed. She could talk: "But I couldn't sing. Nothing. Just one low note, maybe. "It was the hardest thing. I cried and cried."

There was more. A mammogram found cancer two years ago. It was early enough for a lumpectomy, though she lost her blonde locks a while to chemo and radiation. Still, she taught herself to sing again. One note at a time. All but one octave, her top rung, came back. She even finished the CD, which had a fling on Jazz FM9l.

The voice is powerful still, growly or sweeping, husky with hickory smoke. 'Even when she laughs. Which she does often and easily. "Before, I'd freak out at every s----y little thing. Now, if it's not life or death, it's not important. "I think there's more realism in my singing. When I sing something, I mean it." Her husband, Don, 45, whom she picked up in a singles bar 16 years ago, was so impressed with the volunteers who helped his wife through her illness that he has started a charity' in their honour. Care Unlimited provides store discount cards, which charities' use to reward volunteers. The first fund-raiser is Diana Drew's comeback concert in a Markham ballroom. She holds the last note of Let's Fall in Love, holds it forever, leaving the sax and drums in her dust.
"Silk," she tells herself, relieved. She is trembling, sweating in her long, black velvet jacket. A split second and the ballroom crowd goes wild. "I can still do this," she thinks, "and they like it." She swerves into My Foolish Heart. She sings all night.