No one was more surprised to discover she had psychic abilities than Gada Jane herself. Raised in a highly rational and academic household, Jane focused on reason and logic to determine her life path. But while trying to relax and reconnect with her body during a period of burnout, something unlocked in Jane, and she began to tune in to mystical and spiritual energies that would lead to her intuitive and psychic practice.
Jane and I met for a walk in Homer Watson Park to discuss her childhood, her creative work and the dramatic shift that her life took when she began to have psychic experiences.
“I usually come [to Homer Watson Park] into the woods and meditate, and then I walk a bit,” Jane said.
“Learning to meditate, learning to relax and connect to things I feel is very significant for opening up the creative process.”
Jane was born and raised in Sudbury, the child of educators, in an environment where reason was prized as a means to learn and explore the world.
“I grew up in a very creative, very open-minded [home], but open-minded in the sense that you want to be very reasonable,” Jane said.
“If you can’t make an argument for it, then you shouldn’t believe it.”
After completing an undergraduate degree at Laurentian University, Jane moved south to pursue a master’s degree in Theatre at the University of Guelph. A chance to save money on rent by moving in with her sister brought Jane to Waterloo, where she pursued writing and film projects. She formed The Predella Project, a small weekly writing group that met for six years to work on writing craft and process.
“I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to finish pieces,” Jane said.
“After studying English, I felt like everything got taken apart in my head, and it took me a really long time to figure out how to put things back together again.”
It was while working as an artist and arts administrator that Jane began to experience burnout. She took a trip to Europe with her sister in the hopes of healing and had a transformative experience.
“I just started trying to relax. I was trying to figure out how you would be on vacation,” Jane said.
“So, I started to just walk around Europe and notice what I felt in my body…I would end up getting drawn to these people and things that ushered me a step further into this place…it felt magical and interesting.”
Jane found that she was able to tap into people and give readings with a focus on how their brains work and how they process the world, drawing on her strong cognitive empathy. She began honing these abilities in 2015 and started practicing as a psychic and intuitive in 2018 after subjecting her process to scrutiny and her own skepticism.
“I found it really agonizing, the process of going ‘wait, am I wrong about this, or is there something really here?’” Jane said.
“I always think you have to test to trust…you can say, ‘Okay, what does this feeling mean? And if I try trusting it, where does that lead me?’”
Jane took her psychic abilities and experiences, paired with her sense of reason and logic, and turned them into a one-person show. Becoming Psychic premiered at Femme Folks Fest in Kitchener in March of 2026, then Jane toured it to Fringe Festivals in New York, Boston, Montreal, Windsor and Halifax over the summer. Next year, she will take the show on another tour through Northern Ontario.
“It has this sort of emotional up and down that I don’t think I was fully used to,” Jane said of performing her solo show.
“But there’s just a sense of being with the audience and forgetting about everything else.”
As we walked along the gravel path, being careful to avoid the small toads that shared the space, Jane reflected what drew her to this trail.
“I think it’s the height of the trees. We don’t have that many areas that feel enclosed like this,” Jane said.
“It just has a very rich and deep energy.”
Now that her tour has wrapped up, Jane is turning her attention to other creative projects. She is working on a web series that explores a clown character and will start filming around Kitchener-Waterloo in the fall. Jane finds the support of the arts community in the region helpful for creating new work.
“I like that [film] continues to exist,” Jane said.
“Theatre has this quality where you have to keep doing it for it to exist…when I’m not performing and I’m not writing, I feel like there’s something very incomplete.”
We finished our walk by climbing to higher ground for a view of the Grand River as we talked about the lessons that Jane has learned from providing psychic readings and what she thinks people, in general, would benefit from.
“I think people need to do more actually listening to what they’re feeling, just attending to it,” Jane said.
“There’s a lot of information in the body, and you don’t have to believe in psychics to believe that [you] could know something about [yourself] that’s not just in [your] mind.”
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