OATP Final Day: Brianna Hennessy once had to choose to live, now carries Canadian flag at Paralympics Closing Ceremonies

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The Ottawa Sports Pages Fund to support local sports journalism

As we wound down our Ottawa at the Olympics coverage, we asked our readers to consider supporting our storytelling with a donation to the Ottawa Sports Pages Fund, while noting that the daily in-depth reports we produced on our local Olympians simply can’t be found in other media outlets.

Well, that unfortunate reality is probably doubly true for Ottawa’s Paralympians, who work every bit as hard as their Olympic counterparts, despite navigating their own set of additional challenges.

Our team at the Ottawa Sports Pages has thoroughly enjoyed sharing their amazing stories during the Games, in the lead-up to the Games, and in between Games too.

For sure it gets us fired up watching them perform on sport’s biggest stage, but we also love following their journeys back at home – like the goalball team training out of elementary school gyms, Ottawa Fencing in the basement of St. Paul University, or seeing the passion of Brianna Hennessy’s supporters gathered for a watch party at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday morning in a portable classroom.

When Hennessy spoke at our Ottawa Sports Pages’ 10th anniversary event (and let me tell you, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room as she shared her deeply personal story), she thanked us for covering para sport since it still often struggles to get exposure.

Whether it’s para sport, women’s sport, youth sport, or any other amateur sport that rarely makes headlines, our mission is to fill the gaps left by the mainstream media.

Of course, it costs money to put together our coverage, and our small not-for-profit organization would love to tell even more stories. If you’re like us and you see the power of sport in building community and inspiring people to be their best, we’d really appreciate a tax-deductible charitable donation to the Ottawa Sports Pages Fund if possible.

Your support will enable us to continue telling great stories from the playground to the Paralympic podium. Thank you very much for your consideration and for following our Ottawa at the Olympics and Paralympics coverage during the Paris 2024 Games!

– Dan Plouffe, Ottawa Sports Pages Executive Director

Ottawa at the Paralympics Final Day: Canada’s first para canoe medallist Brianna Hennessy ‘shocked’ and ‘incredibly honoured’ to carry Canadian flag at Closing Ceremonies

Newsletter By Dan Plouffe, Charlie Pinkerton, Jackson Starr, Adam Beauchemin, Martin Cleary & Kaitlyn LeBoutillier

In November 2014, Brianna Hennessy was crossing the street in Toronto while at a work conference when she was struck by a taxicab and knocked unconscious.

When she woke up, she learned that the highest vertebra in her neck was broken, one of the main arteries to her brain was severed, and that she was tetraplegic.

“I had to choose to survive when I was in the hospital,” Hennessy recounted in an interview with past Ottawa Sports Pages editor Charlie Pinkerton in spring 2021. “When something bad happens, you only have three choices: you can let it define you, you can let it destroy you, or you can find a way to let it strengthen you.

“And for me, the third was my only option. The resiliency – I’ve learned through sports.”

On Sept. 8, 2024, Hennessy’s decision to live on was rewarded in a way that she could have never even dreamed of while in hospital.

A day removed from capturing Canada’s first-ever para canoe Games medal, the 39-year-old paraded the maple leaf flag at the Stade de France as the Canadian Paralympic team’s Closing Ceremonies flag bearer – an inspiration to young paddlers, female athletes, people with disabilities, 40 million Canadians, and the human spirit.

“Oh my goodness. I mean, I’m still in shock,” Hennessy told CBC moments before entering the stadium. “What an absolutely incredible honour to represent so many wonderful athletes, and all their survival stories are so inspiring.

“We’re here to celebrate all together as one big team and we hope we can do them proud.”

Hennessy was pushed by her Ottawa River Canoe Club coach Joel Hazzan so she could focus on holding the flag and waving to the crowd of 64,000 alongside co-flag bearer Nicholas Bennett, a para swimmer who won three medals.

Hennessy wore a cardinal pendent with her mother’s ashes for the occasion, and makeup representing a rising phoenix “with their wings and feathers like the bright Canada red that we’re so prideful about,” she highlighted. “I feel like we’re just here to all rise up together and enjoy this spectacular moment.”

WATCH Brianna Hennessy and Nicholas Bennett carry Canadian flag into Closing Ceremonies:

Previously a champion boxer, ball hockey, rugby and hockey player, Hennessy credited her background in sport for giving her the resilience required to work through her rehabilitation, and since discovering para sport – first wheelchair rugby, and later paddling – she’s found her passion and her calling, she told the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Jackson Starr before the Paris Games.

Yesterday, Hennessy confidently and comfortably paddled to the podium and her place in Canadian sport history.

“I’m so proud,” she underlined. “This year’s the 10-year anniversary of my accident. I should have died, but I’ve been fighting back. This is the pinnacle for me. It made it all worth it.

“The Paralympics means more because everyone here has a million reasons to give up, but choose to go on.”

Brianna Hennessy paddles to 4th in kayak, signals interest in track wheelchair racing

Hennessy learned later in the day yesterday that she’d been chosen as Closing Ceremonies flag bearer after winning her silver medal, but she still had work to do on the water before she could enter full celebration mode.

Today, Hennessy raced in her second championship event in Paris in the KL1 kayak women’s 200 metres. She first posted the fastest time of the semi-final round (57.00 seconds) to qualify for the A final an hour-and-a-half later.

Then Hennessy battled to a fourth-place finish in 54.47 – 1.34 back of the bronze medal position.

“I am so happy about this,” she told CBC afterwards. “You know, there’s only two of us doing canoe and kayak. Everyone else in my category had the day off yesterday, and I had the semi-final today as well, so I’m just happy I laid out what was left in the tank. That was my job.”

Hennessy was then asked what she thinks her future holds, and she responded, once again, with unbridled ambition, hinting that she may like to take on yet another new sport in the next quadrennial.

“Maybe a vacation first,” she laughed. “We’ve got World Champs in Italy next year, so we’ll start there in the four-year.

“We’ll see what happens in L.A. (2028). I’d like to maybe try some athletics sports, so we’ll see what happens with that.”

Ottawa at the Paralympics Rewind: 12 days of highs and lows

It’s been quite the ride as our local Paralympians brought us a mix of heartbreaking and heart-warming moments during the Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Games in Paris. Let’s take a look at the highlights (which you can look back on in greater detail via OttawaSportsPages.ca/Ottawa-at-the-Paralympics).

Patrice Dagenais and the Canadian wheelchair rugby team fought in one of the Paralympics’ most competitive sports among the world’s top-six teams, but wound up in the sixth position with several narrow losses.

Featuring the all-Ottawa starting lineup of Whitney Bogart, Amy Burk and Emma Reinke, the Canadian women’s goalball team enjoyed a strong group stage performance before running into the hot hand of Israel’s star player in the quarter-final round. But the team rebounded a day later to earn the fifth-place position and a win for Bogart in the final Paralympic match of her career.

Bianca Borgella re-injured her leg and collapsed to the track while in solid position in the T13 para athletics women’s 100-metre final, while fellow Paralympic rookie Keegan Gaunt also debuted on the track in the 1,500 m.

Our local Paralympians then finished the Games with a bang. Trinity Lowthian emerged with Canada’s best-ever wheelchair fencing finish at a Paralympics with her fifth-place showing.

Several athletes from the larger national capital region were also at the Games, led by Pembroke’s Jolan Wong and Carleton Place’s Anne Fergusson, who captured Canada’s first-ever Paralympic sitting volleyball medal.

And of course there was Brianna Hennessy’s iconic first Canadian para canoe medal at the Paralympics, which brought a trailer-full of Ottawa River Canoe Club supporters out of their morning fog and into elation with her historic performance.

Bright young stars emerge among Ottawa’s Paralympians

Our local members of the Canadian Paralympic team are an equal mix of veterans in their mid-to-late 30s, and younger athletes in their 20s whose careers are perhaps just starting to bud.

Dagenais, Burk and Bogart have all competed in 4+ Paralympics, while Hennessy was taking part in her second Games but carried a lengthy background in high-level sport before her spinal cord injury.

There is a younger generation ready to rise behind them. Second-time Paralympian Reinke is already among the world’s top goalball players at age 26.

World Championships multi-medallist Borgella was at the head of the T13 women’s 100 m – another one of the Paralympics’ signature events – before the 21-year-old’s injured hamstring gave out, while 24-year-old second-generation Paralympian Gaunt is packed with potential too.

Just two years deep into wheelchair fencing, 22-year-old Lowthian took down the world’s #2 and #3 epée athletes before falling one bout short of her shot at a medal.

When an athlete like Lowthian excels among the world’s best and places fifth at the Paralympics not long after taking up their sport, hopes would often run high that a podium performance could lie ahead with a bit more training and experience (see Brianna Hennessy example above).

And it’s certainly a scenario that could well come true for Lowthian too. However, her health is perhaps more variable than most Paralympians, and she knows well the up-and-downs that autoimmune autonomic neuropathy has presented since she found herself hospitalized for much of high school.

Ottawa Sports Pages reporter Dan Plouffe caught up with Lowthian the day after her historic performance, and she explained that she doesn’t really know what the future holds, but that she’s loved every moment of her Paralympic experience.

Just so we don’t leave you to deal the end of our Ottawa at the Paralympics coverage completely cold turkey, we invite you to read that full feature on Lowthian’s Games experience/future on our website here. (And don’t worry, we’ll have more coverage when the team has landed back on home soil too!)