Photos of Dr Adams:
Chuck Swinden |
How did you end up in North
Bay of all places? About 17 years ago I came over
from England to a conference in Vancouver to present
my research. I came across some people recruiting psychiatrists
from BC to come work in Ontario. They had a booth at
the conference and the background of the booth was a
Ski-doo flying through a snow bank. It was just amazing.
Are you telling me you moved
halfway across the world because of a photo of a Ski-doo?
I’d never seen a Ski-doo before. I asked the
man at the booth what that machine was, how it worked,
et cetera. Through that conversation I got recruited
to come to North Bay. Plus they told me at the conference
that North Bay is just like Vancouver. [laughs]
I hear you built your own house
there. I designed my house and I built everything
pretty much, except for the concrete for the foundation.
I nailed all the 2x6s together, did all the plumbing,
did all the wiring, the roof. I didn’t do the drywalling
— I had professionals come in.
But you’re Sue the Psych
— not Bob the Builder. How’d you know how
to do all that? I read it in books.
|
5 things you didn’t know
about... Dr Susan Adams
Her favourite British food
The English national dish, as you know, is curry.
One thing I miss is we don’t have many Indian
dishes here in North Bay, so I like to eat that
when I go to Toronto.
The only Canadian thing better
than Ski-doos I had a friend who was a diehard
Maple Leafs fan and introduced me to the Leafs,
so I started to watch it on TV. Somebody gave
me a hockey stick and puck, then somebody at work
who plays hockey invited me to come out. The other
women playing stayed well clear of me back in
the days before I could stop.
Benny Hill or Monty Python?
Yes, Minister. But when I was a youngster,
Monty Python was all the rage. And Benny
Hill certainly was quite an odd fellow.
What she thinks of TV psychiatrists
like Dr Jennifer Melfi of The Sopranos
and Fraser and Niles Crane of Fraser?
I think psychs are often portrayed in peculiar
ways in films, just like people with mental disorders,
in ways that do not coincide at all with my experience.
Pssst — her next movie
is about... a pair of patients in a psych
hospital who sort of form an unlikely couple.
The woman becomes pregnant, and it’s about
how the caregivers struggle to deal with the relationship.
It’s the sort of situation that we sometimes
come across that creates all kinds of ethical
dilemmas.
|
But... why? It partly came
from a misperception. When I first came here, people
were talking about building their own houses. They meant
they engaged a contractor, but in England that meant
they actually built it. So I decided if they can do
it, so can I. It was only partway through it that I
realized these other people didn’t mean the same
thing.
Would you do it again? No,
it was many orders of magnitude more work than I had
possibly realized I was taking on.
What’s the oddest job you
ever had? I played in a pop group called Red Wine
for a time.
What instrument did you play?
Drums and percussion.
Any top 10 singles? No,
we didn’t have any great success, but we had a
lot of fun.
You make movies, too, right?
Yes, I’ve made two short films.
What sort of films are they?
One is about a dysfunctional relationship in which an
unfaithful cad gets his comeuppance in a rather surprising
way. That was my first film, called Tom. The
second was called Point of Order, and that was
more challenging, with a larger cast and an action sequence.
In that one, most of the action took place in a corporate
boardroom, and there are some not-verynice people. A
murder takes place, and the story is about all the manipulation
that has been going into what has happened.
Have your films been shown on
the big screen? The first one has. Actually, at
a local festival here I got a little prize for my first
film.
What’s the strangest thing
that ever happened to you as a forensic shrink?
When I worked in London I was at a meeting on a ward,
a very busy morning. All of a sudden I’m interrupted
by a nurse who said, “Your husband’s here
and wants to speak to you.” I was stunned when
a stranger wandered into the room. He said, “I
think I am your husband.” It turned out he was
a patient from another hospital, who had seen me and
gotten it into his head that I was his wife. Subsequently
I had several further encounters with this man, until
I was told he posed a threat to me.
Will you be rooting for health
minister George Smitherman to be reelected in October?
I personally will be, yes. I’ve only met him a
couple of times, but he seems to be quite a character.
He comes off to me as being very decisive.
Interview by Sam
Solomon
|
