Babz Chula grew up in a working-class Jewish neighborhood in Jamaica, N.Y. Her father Larry was a mechanic and stock-car driver who was killed in a race when he was just 27, leaving his wife, Abby, a 24-year-old widow, to raise Babz and her brother. Abby was a booking agent for Leonard Berstein. The family settled in Los Angeles where Babz won a scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts. Later, she headed for New York to be a folk singer until returning to the West Coast counterculture, eventually moving to the Kootenays, in British Columbia, Canada. In the early 1980's, Babz relocated to Vancouver where she resumed her acting and singing career.