Suzanne was born in Tillsonburg, Ontario, on May 20, 1960, but grew up in a working class district in the East Island of Montreal, within sight of the Big O. Her parents, Sonia and Ferenc (Frank), were Hungarian emigrés.

The language of the home was Hungarian, but she and her brother, also named Frank, quickly learned French, which was the language of the neighbourhood. She attended school in English, so by the time she was an adolescent she was fluent in three languages. The legacy of that childhood experience was a lifelong love of languages and travel.

Her childhood was difficult because of unhappiness at home. But it created in Suzanne a resilience, self-reliance, and self-discipline that served her well, and those whom she loved, throughout her life.

She was an excellent student and also worked on the side during high school, including a stint at the Olympic Games held in Montreal in 1976. By the time she was in CEGEP, she was working long hours in the evenings and weekends, sometimes amounting to full-time work. Eventually she got a job in admitting during off-hours at the Montreal General Hospital and made many lifelong friends there.

Finding herself without a home when she was 19, she was taken in by the family of a work-friend, who found her a tiny basement apartment and supplied her with a few sticks of used furniture. From that time on she was completely self-supporting.

After CEGEP, she went to Concordia University where she obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1983. She also took a semester to study business, oddly enough, at Karl Marx University in Budapest, where she reconnected with extended family as well.

After her first degree, she was admitted to the master’s program in economics at McGill, then as now one of finest economics departments in the country. She claimed to hate accounting, but excelled in it, which would have consequences for colleagues and family members less meticulous than she. She graduated in 1985.

It was a slow time in the economy in Montreal, and after holding several jobs she decided to take the foreign service exams and was admitted. She moved to Ottawa in 1989, and many of her closest friendships were formed in the coming few years as she trained for Canada’s diplomatic corps.

Her first posting was to Belgrade on the eve of the break up of Yugoslavia. She plunged into learning the Serbian language, in which she became conversational. And she traveled extensively through what would later become Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as neighbouring countries such as Bulgaria and Albania. She loved it. Unfortunately, when Canada imposed trade sanctions, her job as a trade officer was eliminated. She was transferred to Houston, where she found the language and culture less to her taste.

She returned from Houston to Ottawa where she worked through the latter half of the 1990s. In January 1996, during a fuel stop in Osaka on a Team Canada trade mission to Asia with Prime Minister Chrétien, she met Paul Adams, who was covering the trip for the CBC. Luckily for him she was not put off by first impressions. They married the next year.

In 1998, Suzanne gave birth to Alexandre. Unfortunately Alex suffered from congenital heart defects that led to a harrowing summer and fall when his survival was in doubt. She regarded this as the greatest crisis of her life, but it created mighty bonds of love between them that were evident to her last day.

In 2001, Suzanne took a posting in Tel Aviv, starting just days before the September 11 attacks. Despite the tension of those years, she loved the chance to explore this fascinating region. Virtually every Saturday involved a day-trip to some historic part of Israel or the Palestinian territories. She also turned out to be a pretty tough customer in a souk.

One day, at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, she ran into a colleague of Paul’s who described an orphanage in Bethlehem that was run by a tiny Lebanese nun and was operating under conditions of an Israeli curfew and siege in the town. This fascinated her, and led to several furtive trips dodging army patrols through otherwise deserted streets, in defiance of foreign service rules. There she and Paul found Sophia, whom they adopted in January 2003.

After Israel, Suzanne returned to headquarters in Ottawa for several years, where she continued to work on Middle Eastern issues, and then on European affairs. In 2011, she took a posting in Wellington, New Zealand. She took great joy in exploring this beautiful little country, and travelled extensively with the family in her first year there. Unfortunately in September of 2012, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Suzanne spent nearly a year under treatment in New Zealand, but when she could, she resumed work there, as well as her wanderings through the countryside.

In 2013, she returned to Ottawa with the family. While enduring many rounds of treatment in subsequent years, she managed to travel extensively: to Asia and Latin America with friends; to Banff to ski with Sophia; to Vancouver for Rugby 7s with Alex; and many short getaways with Paul all over the United States.

She set herself three goals for what she knew would be her last summer: to attend Alex’s graduation; to spend time at the cottage; and to celebrate her wedding anniversary in September. She managed them all. She was still swimming most days in July. On September 20, exactly one week before she died, she and Paul shared a beautiful anniversary dinner at a restaurant in Ottawa.

Her decline in the last few days of her life was precipitous, but through heavy sedation, just hours before her death, she was able to whisper “I love you” to each of her children.

Anyone inclined to make a memorial gift in her honour should consider cancer research at the Ottawa Hospital Foundation, a cause to which she contributed and from which she benefited.

http://ohfoundation.ca/ways-give/tribute-memoriam-giving