Sounds Like Canada:
Shelagh Rogers interviews Jillian Horton
in CBC's Vancouver Studio

(First broadcast Dec. 20th, 2004)

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SHELAGH: Welcome back to Sounds Like Canada on CBC Radio One; my name is Shelagh Rogers. Making that first CD is a huge step for any musician; it's really a milestone. It's almost like landing that first job after years of school and preparation. So just imagine what the past few months have been like for Jillian Horton...make that "Doctor" Jillian Horton. Last month she moved to Winnipeg from Toronto to begin her career as an internist, and the month before she released her debut CD called, simply, "Jillian Horton". Jillian is with me in Vancouver this morning, and before we talk, here's something from that CD, and something without which I would perish like the witch in the wizard of Oz...this is "Good Strong Coffee".

SHELAGH: Jillian Horton, and "Good Strong Coffee" from her CD, which is simply called "Jillian Horton". We call that an eponymous CD. Jillian Horton is with me in Vancouver...and I can call you Jill?

JILLIAN: You sure can. Good morning, Shelagh!

SHELAGH: Well, you were channeling a little Joni in that?

JILLIAN: Definitely. One of my favorites.

SHELAGH: That's a lovely song. You know, life is like a...I sound like Forest Gump if I say life can be like a good strong coffee...you brought one with you.

JILLIAN: I did...yes, I'm an addict, I freely admit it.

SHELAGH: Good for you...I am too. This is a really lovely CD.

JILLIAN: Thank you so much.

SHELAGH: And you are having the most amazing of years as I look at it from the outside. How has it been going for you? You seem perfectly relaxed.

JILLIAN: Well, I think it's just the coffee...I'm kind of on that buzz. It's been a pretty incredible year...I'm so lucky. I finished my fellowship in general internal medicine, moved to Winnipeg, and released the CD in October, and what's been really neat about it is all of these things are sort of a culmination of years and years of work. The CD I started working on roughly the same time I started my residency, so everything is happening with a big bang after years and years of work behind the scenes.

SHELAGH: Which came first...music or medicine?

JILLIAN: Oh, definitely music. I was, when I was young, a classical pianist and aspired to pursue that as a career, but then when I was about fifteen or sixteen I started having just a lot of problems with tendonitis. It was my own fault...I pushed it too hard, I played too much, I didn't have great technique at the time, and I was aware by the time I was about seventeen that it just wouldn't make sense to pursue a career as a classical performer because the demands are so great and you just can't pursue something like that with a physical impediment of that nature...sort of an overuse problem.

SHELAGH: Did you groove to other kinds of music besides classical music when you were a kid?

JILLIAN: Well I did, but I think I experienced what a lot of people who train classically when they're younger feel which is, a degree of "closet" interest in that music, because a lot of your teachers want you to pursue classical music and everything else is sort of "below", you know...

SHELAGH: "Sub".

JILLIAN: Yes, exactly, "inferior", and "listen to that on your own time". But I listened a lot; just in our own home we had a lot of Joni Mitchell, a lot of Gordon Lightfoot, people like that...Simon and Garfunkel, and I grew up really with a staple in my musical diet as just what I consider to be those really great songwriters from that era, and I definitely feel that structurally I'm still learning from those people and still trying to emulate them as well.

SHELAGH: Of course, I'm going to come back and talk to you some more about music, but tell me about the medicine angle of your life. When did you start to get interested in that as something you wanted to do or be?

JILLIAN: Well, I guess when I really look back, from a young age I sort of had these competing interests, you know, and even in my teens I would occasionally think that I would like to pursue a career in medicine and that it might be something I would enjoy. But then again, I kind of got sidelined with the music, and then I went and I did an undergraduate degree at the University of Western Ontario in English and Drama, and all the while I was still kind of thinking medicine, maybe, in the back of my mind. But I guess what really happened was as I got a little bit older, I just developed really...I would have to call it a compulsion...to pursue medicine. I think it was just so deep inside of me that I really found there was no way around it other than to do it, which is why after I finished my studies in English...I did a Master's Degree in English...I ended up deciding that...

SHELAGH: You should be about 59, and you're not.

JILLIAN: Maybe I am!

SHELAGH: My, you're mightily well preserved, Jill!

JILLIAN: Do you want to know what face cream I use?

SHELAGH: Yes, I do! I'll buy shares. But you're 29, right?

Jillian: I just turned 30, actually, I have to confess, but I can't believe you made me say that on the air.

SHELAGH: Oh, listen...thirty's so, so nothing...let me tell you. I'm seeing, around the corner...forty-nine, which is the age everyone thinks you really aren't, you know, because you're really 50 but you're saying you're 49?

JILLIAN: Well, you don't look 49, just for the record!

SHELAGH: Well, thank you very much...you simply don't have to say that. But tell me where the instinct (came from) in what you have to be inside yourself to be a doctor...the instinct to care, the instinct to help, the instinct to heal?

JILLIAN: Well, for me I definitely know where that came from, there's no question. I have a sister who is 42, and she suffered from a brain tumor when she was about six years old. She was born a normal, healthy child and had this devastating event at that age, had surgery, had a post-operative meningitis, and was left severely, severely handicapped. And my parents, you know...this was 35 years ago, made a decision that was not really in vogue at the time...they said, she's living at home with us, and...she's part of our family like any of the other children...there are four of us. And so, you know, I never knew my sister any other way except with her severe physical handicaps and some cognitive problems and behavioral impediments. But at the heart of it, she's an amazing, vibrant, exciting, hilarious, wonderful person who has suffered so much, who never complains, and I guess my whole life I've really born witness to the aftereffects of that and to, you know, how people in the world have responded to her. And I wish I could say that generally it's been wonderful, but it hasn't been at all. It's been just...my real medical education, I always say, has come from my sister and seeing how she's treated in the world and in the medical community.

And I guess from that, what I think I really took was, I know what it's like when someone in your family is sick, and nobody cares...and you can't get people to do what you need them to do, and you can't get them to see your family member as a precious human being. Like I said, it was kind of a compulsion. Just in my twenties I knew that feeling that way was something fairly unique and that I really needed to go through the process of being able to turn that around and use that for a good purpose rather than just pursue academics, which I think is perfectly fine and noble, but for me it just wasn't enough. And I have gotten so much vindication and satisfaction and just a deep rooted kind of peace out of pursuing medicine from the point of view of being able to say to people...and say to people without words...I know where you're coming from and I'm going to help you.

SHELAGH: And I'm going to do something. Tell me about your parents. They must be remarkable people.

JILLIAN: They're phenomenal, and they're my role models and my heroes in life, definitely. I think in this day and age it's still more rare than you think for people to stand one hundred percent behind a child forty years later. My sister lives in a self-managed care sort of situation, but my parents still do all the administration of that, they see her every day, they take her to all her appointments. There's no way to express how deeply involved they are...it consumes everything for them, and you know, it's unfortunate in one sense that it has to be that way because I think everybody has...people have dreams for their children, but you also have dreams for your parents, and that' not really what I would choose for them right now. But at the same time, boy, does it ever put everything else into perspective...you realize that in comparison to that, and to caring for your own people in life, like...what could possibly be more important and more meaningful? I mean, to me, there's really very little that even compares. So I kind of...I feel very lucky that I always have this daily, this consistent yardstick...being able to look at things and go, "Yeah, here's what matters, don't get upset about this, don't worry about this". Definitely that situation in my life is kind of a constant backdrop that helps me stay focused on what is important, I think.

SHELAGH: You know what it sounds like...it just sounds like an amazing love story between your parents and in your whole family.

JILLIAN: I think in a very strange sense we're a very fortunate family because we support each other so much...it would have been very easy, I think, for something like this to completely rip our family apart, and my Dad is always fond of saying when people ask him, "Why didn't you just take off?", he always says, "Well, Jean told me I would have to take the kids if I left."

SHELAGH: Not without humor.

JILLIAN: Exactly. Yeah, that's one of the keys.

SHELAGH: Now, they're in Toronto, am I right?

JILLIAN: No, they're actually in Winnipeg...no, what am I saying, they're in Brandon, I'm in Winnipeg.

SHELAGH: Let's follow your geographic voyage for the last little while. Ok, you're from Brandon, then there was Toronto?

JILLIAN: Then there was London. I went to Western when I was seventeen.

SHELAGH: Why did I get Toronto in there?

JILLIAN: No, I did go to Toronto, you're right...that comes a little later. So I spent five years in London...

SHELAGH: I know why I'm thinking of Toronto...there was that guy!

JILLIAN: Yeah...and there's that song!

SHELAGH: The song is "Winnipeg", and we might just play a little bit of it, but...do you want to set it up for us before we play a little bit?

JILLIAN: Well, I think that...this is one of my favorite songs on the CD, and this is a song for me that kind of embodies all the key things going on in my life for the last four years. Home...where home fits as a priority, what is worth giving up, what isn't worth giving up, and what really happens when you make decisions about what's important to you and where you want to live.

SHELAGH: This is Jill Horton...Jillian Horton...on her CD, and the song "Winnipeg".

SHELAGH: Jillian Horton and the song called "Winnipeg", which is from her CD called "Jillian Horton"...and Jill's with me in our Vancouver studio. Such a lovely song.

JILLIAN: Thank you very much.

SHELAGH: And that guy in the song?

JILLIAN: Don't know...I really don't know.

SHELAGH: You're recently married, right?

JILLIAN: About a year-and-a-half.

SHELAGH: And who did you meet and who did you fall in love with and what happened? Tell me everything.

JILLIAN: Well, I had one of those experiences that everybody wishes for in life where you can kind of meet someone and fall in love at first sight, and that's exactly what happened to me. My husband is now in law school in Winnipeg, but he's actually a musician...he's a classically-trained pianist and has a Master's Degree in performance from Juilliard, so...we just had a lot of common ground, and, I think, this obvious trait in our personalities, that we just can't settle on one thing. We both clearly appear to have to have two careers on the go at all times.

SHELAGH: At least!

JILLIAN: He's doing a fair bit of work as an accompanist in Winnipeg right now.

SHELAGH: Perfect. And are you loving Winnipeg?

JILLIAN: You know...I am. It has been a long process for me, psychologically and physically just getting back there. I realized five or six years into my time in Ontario that as much as I really enjoyed training there, and I had wonderful experiences there and friends there, that it just wasn't home. I missed my family, I felt that I'd left at such a young age that I didn't really know at the time what I was leaving, and I've had so much peace in my heart in the last few months just being back there. It feels so completely right. I certainly took some flack from people for the move, and I think a lot of people thought it was a very strange thing to do. When you have a record coming out you usually move to Toronto or L.A., you don't move to Winnipeg, but I'm at a point in my life that I have realized, and at some cost, that you just have to say what you're going to do, where you're going to go...you make your own priorities and if they change, that's fine, but you change them, you don't let them kind of be changed, and I really felt that for me this was just completely a way to reclaim what was important in my life, quality of life, family, home, all those things.

SHELAGH: Which is all so very doable in Winnipeg, if people don't understand that about Winnipeg...and I know that even moving to Vancouver I took a little flack from people in Toronto too.

JILLIAN: I'll bet.

SHELAGH: You know..."How can you leave the center of the firmament?", which is ridiculous. There are things you can do in other cities that you just can't do in Toronto, and they do have something to do with the quality of your life.

JILLIAN: I completely agree, and I think that I've already felt just a real surge in my creativity and writing and everything else...not to mention in my other life, as a physician...

SHELAGH: Oh, that!

JILLIAN: Oh that little bit of me...a real degree of camaraderie and just, you know, a nice relaxed atmosphere at the hospitals that just really agrees with me...so I'm really happy with the move.

SHELAGH: Why did you choose internal medicine as your specialty?

JILLIAN: Well, I was really torn between that and pediatric neurology...that was my other great love in life, probably again for obvious reasons. I ended up choosing internal medicine because I felt that I really loved the geriatric population, and I loved patients who, again, had some of the same kind of characteristics as my sister, very vulnerable people that don't tend to be high on anybody's priority list in life professionally. So I felt that there are a lot of people out there who love children, but there aren't quite as many people, I don't think, who feel that same affection for geriatric populations or just other vulnerable people, and I felt that probably I could do an equivalent amount of good in internal medicine for that reason. One of the nice side effects has been that internal medicine lends itself to the kind of structural/ schedule flexibility that has let me release this album, because you work very hard for prolonged periods of time, and then you're off, because you can't work at that rate for 50 weeks out of the year...if you try, you're going to have a very short career, I think. So for me, it just so happens that it's been a perfect match, and that was kind of just a lucky fluke...I didn't really understand that when I started it all.

SHELAGH: Very cool. I want to play another cut from the CD...do you want to tell us about this one?

JILLIAN: Well, you know, it's funny...this song is one that I think has been really transformed into something more than the sum of its parts by Phil Dwyer's playing...it's so phenomenal...and it does have just that little touch of Joni Mitchell in it as well, of her arrangements, which I love. I'm a huge fan of hers, obviously. I think of this song as one that I wrote about a particular period in my life, maybe about three years back, when I was really despairing about a lot of things, including whether or not I would ever really meet that Mr. "Right" instead of Mr. "Close Enough", or Mr. "Not Even Close'...

SHELAGH:...by a mile!

JILLIAN: That's right...or Mr. "No Way". But I think it's sort of that, and just a period of general disillusionment in my life that I'm happy to say is definitely over.

SHELAGH: Here's Jill Horton.

SHELAGH: "All the Pretty Horses" from Jillian Horton's CD called "Jillian Horton". And how very nice that you could get someone the caliber...you've got so much caliber yourself...of Phil Dwyer playing soprano sax, I think it was, on that cut. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.

JILLIAN: Isn't he amazing? The first time I heard him play just kind of...just sent shivers down my spine. He is amazing.

SHELAGH: And you know what? It's lovely that he would be on your debut CD...that's the musical community in this country; it's really something.

JILLIAN: So it is. I think I was very fortunate with Eitan Cornfield as well, my producer, that he was able to recruit a lot of musicians to kind of work on this project in the same kind of gesture of great faith that he showed when he became my producer and my mentor and champion in this industry.

SHELAGH: Well Jill, I'm glad he did, because we got to meet you, and we'll talk to you again, I know.

JILLIAN: Well, thank you so much, Shelagh. It's just such a pleasure to be here...thank you.

SHELAGH: That's Dr. Jillian Horton with me in Vancouver.

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Copyright Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2004.

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Email Sounds Like Canada with your comments on this interview and Jillian Horton's music at: soundslikecanada@cbc.ca.

This interview was rebroadcast on the Night Time Review on Dec. 21, 2004.