Rima Berns-McGown knows how it sounds.
The former one-term member of the Ontario legislature for Beaches—East York is doing something in her post-political career that I don’t think I’ve ever encountered. Call it extra-sensory perception, call it psychic powers, call it intuitive mediumship — Berns-McGown says she has developed it.
There are some things you should know about Berns-McGown before you pass judgment. She has a PhD, and did a ton of rigorous academic research before getting into politics. She built a career on examining empirically provable evidence before making determinations.
Before winning election for the NDP in the 2018 election, Berns-McGown was well known in academic circles for two fascinating studies. First, for the Mosaic Institute, she surveyed 4,500 Canadians (including more than 200 individual interviews) to better understand those who come here from conflict zones. A few years later, Berns-McGown, originally from South Africa, looked into her own background, which included Afrikaner, “Coloured,” and Jewish roots. Both studies received significant peer and media attention, and were praised for their ground-breaking findings.
But when it comes to her post-politics avocation, the evidence she says she’s encountered is overwhelming. That’s why she’s prepared to share that she has learned to develop intuitive powers, far beyond the norm.
It all came into focus in 2021, after she decided not to seek re-election. Something had stuck with her from her time conducting academic research: she could often predict what the interviewees were going to say. The same thing would happen when she met with constituents.
She began taking courses on intuition. Where does it come from? How does it happen? How can someone improve those abilities?
Then came the breakthrough. A friend asked Berns-McGown to connect with her mother, who’d died a few years earlier. All she had was a first name and a picture. She says she began to see images of a teenage girl; all in black and white, except for her pink dress. Then with her “inner ear” she says she heard a voice speak to her.
She wrote it all down and sent the report to her friend, who was gobsmacked. The phrases and expressions sounded just like her mother.
“Rima,” her friend said, “I’ve known you for 30 years. That’s not how you write.” Her friend’s partner agreed: “That’s your mom,” he said. Berns-McGown says she felt her friend’s mother telling her that she had only ever felt pretty in one picture, and her daughter should put that picture back up on the wall. The friend then experienced another eureka moment. That picture had fallen off the wall and was never fixed.
“Well, I just connected with your mom, and she wants you to put that picture back up!” Berns-McGown told her.
Berns-McGown has since taken more courses as she tries to get a handle on these intuitive abilities. She says she’s now led hundreds of readings, which you can book online for $145 an hour. But she insists this is more energy exchange than business — in fact, her website tells visitors to email her if they can't afford the fee. She will work something out.
Sessions typically start with meditation. Then she gets a sense of what the “people in spirit” are trying to communicate — perhaps remorse at leaving earth too early, or for not saying I love you enough.
Of course she encounters skeptics, and she understands. But Berns-McGown has converted them before, even those she thought would never understand — doctors, lawyers, economists. “Because of my evidence-based background, I have given them permission to own those experiences and to talk about them,” she says.
She shared a story of a cynic who was referred to her in hopes of connecting with her deceased twin sister. The sister who was alive was unmarried with no kids. The deceased sister had kids.
According to Berns-McGown, the deceased sister wanted to say: “When you hug my kids and our family, I can feel that hug.” Turned out, the surviving sister sought out Berns-McGown in the first place because she woke up one morning, alone in bed, and felt her sister’s arms around her, as if it were real.
Another woman wanted Berns-McGown to contact her late husband, who’d been hit by a car and killed while cycling. As Berns-McGown was driving to meet the woman, she says she kept seeing images of waterfalls of roses, but didn’t understand the significance. The woman later told her that was his thing: he constantly gave her roses.
“I could give you example after example after example,” Berns-McGown says. “I am absolutely convinced, after doing this now for a few years, that these sessions are being organized by our loved ones on the other side.”
When I suggested some of her former colleagues at Queen’s Park might raise a Spockian eyebrow at all of this, Berns-McGown was non-plussed.
“I was not sure how people in my former life, whether in the academic world or in the world of politics, would handle this information,” she admits. “But over time, I now am fearless. I just say, yeah, this is what I do now.”
“I’m now an intuitive medium.”
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