A Visionary of Peace and Happiness

Colette Baron-Reid has brought her blithe spirit to find rest and rejuvenation among the hills in our part of the world.

Few people who’ve spent quality time in the healing hills of Northumberland County need convincing that it’s a magical place with a magnetic draw. That draw was undeniably in the cards back in 2015 for renowned psychic medium Colette Baron-Reid. Born in Toronto, the best-selling author and oracle expert and her husband, Marc Lindeman, were living in the States when she first had her vision of the place she’d soon call home.

Colette recalls mentioning to Marc that there was something about the area east of Toronto that was drawing her. “But we had no plans to move back to Canada. And then a girlfriend of mine called me up and said, ‘There’s a place that’s not for sale yet, but we should all go in on it together. It’s near Port Hope… It’s in the hills. Let’s have a country home together!’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, let me see it.’” Colette and Marc had just done a download of what their most perfect place was: Colette wanted a country home designed in a mid-century modern style on 25 acres with a well and claims she had envisioned it. “Anyway, the call came a week later and it had every single thing that I had put on my list, and it was a copy of the Frank Lloyd Wright style that my husband loved!”

The couple’s first glimpse of the impressive rural retreat was via FaceTime. They were enthralled by what they saw. Their friend was simply showing it to them over the phone when they decided then and there to go for it. “We told her, ‘We aren’t sharing this with you! This is ours. We’re taking it!’” And so Colette and Marc moved back to Canada, and happily haven’t looked back since.

While Colette’s demanding work takes her around the world, it’s her Northumberland sanctuary that helps keep her grounded and inspires the spiritual intuitiveness she’s become famous for. It’s a gift she possesses that’s nothing short of mind-boggling for the countless people she’s counselled.

While she was growing up, she never considered her psychic abilities to be superpowers. She actually considered them to be irritations. “I also felt that I was a little cuckoo because of it. When I was young, [my ability] was very intrusive and frightening for me, because I didn’t know how I knew certain things. I used to tell my mother things about her past that she didn’t want me to know,” Colette remembers.

“People think I’m outgoing because I have this extroverted personality, but I’m a real homebody.” COLETTE BARON-REID

As wildly successful as Colette has become thanks to her extraordinary talents, entrepreneurship and tenacity, her life path hasn’t been an easy one. The child of immigrants – her dad came to Canada from Serbia in 1950 and her Polish mother came over from Germany in 1952 – Colette attended an upscale private girls’ school in Toronto for 14 years. While her parents dreamed of her becoming a lawyer, she wanted to pursue a career in music. But she had a violent experience at the age of 19 and became an alcoholic and drug addict as a result. “It changed my life,” says Colette. “I had depression. I had an eating disorder…”

When Colette hit rock bottom with her addictions, she entered a 12-step program at Toronto’s Jean Tweed Treatment Centre for Women. A lot of what happened to Colette actually enabled her to hone her spiritual skills. “But until I became really spiritually and mentally sound – and I’ll still be working on that for the rest of my life – music was my number one desire.” While she was pursuing her music, her natural psychic gifts kept surfacing. “As soon as I touched people, I started seeing things about them and then it all blurted out of my mouth,” she says.

“For the first six years that I was doing readings, I was thinking, ‘I don’t really do this. I’m really a singer.’ And I kept literally saying, ‘Hey universe, this is not what I want! I want that… over there.’” Colette finally did get a record deal at the age of 40 but says it wasn’t what she expected. “It was torturous to be in the music business at my age,” she admits. But the readings, coaching and writing she was doing felt good. She finally came to terms with her calling. She knew she could make a difference in people’s lives, and that this New Age work was indeed meant for her.

Now 38 years clean and sober, she claims she’s been working on her recovery and spiritual life ever since, one day at a time, truly grateful for this second chance at life. At the helm of her own Oracle School, with 15 popular oracle card decks to her credit, 7 books in 27 languages, and a weekly podcast series entitled “Inside the Wooniverse,” Colette is proof positive that one can indeed master their own destiny.

“At the end of the day, I changed my life. I got clean and sober. I worked on a spiritual program and I’ve reinvented myself. I believe a thousand percent that if we want to become the person who has a life we’ve dreamt of, we can become that person. But it takes work and it takes discipline. You can change reality. I really believe you can.”

Besides finding joy from her professional endeavours, much of Colette’s happiness these days comes from the simple pleasures that are part and parcel of her peaceful country lifestyle. She’s been painting a lot lately and plans to turn her 44 huge masterpieces into yet another oracle deck. And she’s writing music again. Her Pomeranian dogs are a welcome luxury. “People think I’m very outgoing because I have this extroverted personality, but I’m a real homebody. When I travel, it’s all very intense. But when I come home, it’s beautiful, quiet and grounded, and I get my juices back here.” You might say Colette’s found nirvana at her precious property, and she’s grateful every day for the miracle that brought her home to this beautiful land, and to a community that she feels she really connects with. She’s convinced that every human really does have access to psychic ability; it’s just that not everyone knows how to tap into it.

“I have met the most interesting people here,” she reflects. “They’re all artsy and a little unique and different and odd. I will say that we’re a giant batch of mystical misfits!” she laughs.

And what does our clairvoyant see in the future for this magical neck of the woods that we’ve all so embraced? “Here’s the deal,” she says. “I believe that the future is mutable…We have choices. Are we going to treat this as a sacred place? It used to be treated that way by the Indigenous people who lived here. I treat it as sacred. So when I think about the potentials and probabilities – how it could all be – I think it’s really about how we treat one another. It only takes a small, tight-knit little group of people to be positive and affirming to mitigate against a lot of the division that we see in the world. It’s contagious. I have high hopes for this place, but it’s really up to us, up to each individual. What are we going to do?” Colette’s awareness of her surroundings and her call to action are both inspiring and empowering – timely messages for this age of enlightenment. And understandably, she’s adamant that our spiritual well-being depends on it.