14 Pioneering Zoomer Cover Stars

This year, the International Women’s Day organizers are calling on Canadians to #GivetoGain – a social media campaign that asks us to “Imagine a gender equal world. A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated.”

Over the years, Zoomer magazine’s covers have proudly featured women from across the globe – celebrities, performers, activists or politicians who have used their influence to help level — and broaden — the playing field for those who come after.

Today, we salute some of these trailblazers by presenting their covers and their stories. Each with a quote to give you taste of the kind of hurdles they’ve overcome and firsts they’ve forged on their way to the top.

– SEPTEMBER 2025 –

“I never felt like music singularly defined me. I had lots of things that brought me joy. Plus, success to me is looking in the mirror at the end of the day and feeling good about the choices I’ve made. Have I helped people? Have I been a good person? Have I done productive things?” —Sarah McLachlan on staying true to her values

– FEBRUARY/MARCH 2025 –

“Everybody complains about old age, but it comes with an enormous freedom. There’s a lot of obligation when you’re young, to impress the teacher, to make yourself financially independent. As you’re older, you just say, ‘I have to do what I want to do because I don’t have much time left.’” —Isabella Rossellini on the independence of aging

– DECEMBER 2024/JANUARY 2025 –

“I went to a surgeon and had some pouches underneath my eyes taken away. But what they don’t tell you, in all this greed and avarice of preying on this unattainable fountain of youth, is that it doesn’t work. I still have pouchy eyes – watch The Bear.” —Jamie Lee Curtis on keeping it real

– OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2024 –

“My mom said to me, ‘You know, sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.’ And I said, ‘Mom, I am a rich man.’” —Cher on confronting – and completely trashing – the stereotypes that defined her era

“She swooped her long blond hair to cover her face, almost like she wanted to disappear and let the music be who she was. And when she sang, her music and verses formed a sort of kaleidoscope that splintered my perception, turned it round and round, then refocused to illuminate a reality I had not dared to see. The more she sang, the more her voice became my own.” —Malka Marom, describing her first encounter with Joni Mitchell

– AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2022 –

“I think that the Hall of Fame represents representation. It represents someone who, like myself, had to pave and take and carve out her own path. It’s validation”  —Deborah Cox on being the first Black woman induction into the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame

– DECEMBER 2021/JANUARY 2022 –

“[The racism has come] from both sides — never white enough, never Black enough. I never got real traction in the music business until I started singing jazz, which was seemingly a more appropriate genre for a brown-skinned girl. That still pisses me off. But songwriting keeps me sane”  —Molly Johnson on overcoming racism in the Canadian music industry

– AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2021 –

“My father was a turban-wearing Sikh all of his life. My mom wore a bindi [a coloured dot on the forehead] every day of her life … and wore saris. They were very visibly different. But they were very proud of who they were. And the upside of that is that it made me confident in being different. It did not bother me. The downside is that we did get stereotyped a lot”  —Monica Deol on becoming a “virtual mentor” for South Asian Canadians as host of MuchMusic’s ‘Electric Circus’

– FEBRUARY/MARCH 2021 –

“As an artist with the privilege of the spotlight, I felt an enormous responsibility to use that forum as a force for good, as a place from which to display the full spectrum of our humanity. I was determined to do all I could to alter the narrative about Black people — to change the way Black women in particular were perceived, by reflecting our dignity”  —Cicely Tyson (1924-2021) from her memoir, ‘Just as I Am’

– APRIL/MAY 2019 –

Hurricane Hazel on the cover of Zoomer’s May 2019 issue.

“That was the mentality back then. And that killed him”  —Hazel McCallion (1921–2023) on winning her first of 12 Mississauga, Ont. mayoral elections in 1978, beating out incumbent Ron Searle who has said that he ignored his instincts to “hammer the hell out of her” because she was a woman

– NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 –

“How many people are there in history like Catherine the Great? Women who were complex, who were vulnerable, who were powerful, who were successful — inevitably, as an actor, you are going to be drawn to the idea of playing someone like that”  —Helen Mirren, 74 at the time, on playing a 33-year-old Catherine the Great for the HBO mini-series she also executive produced

– MARCH 2019 –

“I always felt in a way the people who said, oh, I was famous because of my legs and things like that, I had feeling in a way that they were right. [But after that book,] I knew that I was completely qualified, and I could call myself a scientist”  —Jane Goodall on writing 1986’s ‘The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior’

– APRIL/MAY 2018 –

“We don’t look anything like the characters in the book. But you know, for me personally I have long heard the call, and one of my biggest goals is that I want everyone to feel that they belong and are worth standing up for. That is one of the reasons why I am here, to carry forth that mission” —Oprah on being part of the cast of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’

– DECEMBER 2014/JANUARY 2015 –

“We didn’t really think about gender as much in those days. There was a job to be done, and whoever was there did it. We didn’t think it was so unusual because it was just there to be done”  —Betty White (1922–2022) on being one of the first women producers in television