By Dan Plouffe
Brianna Hennessy is coming up to a 10-year life milestone like no other. On Nov. 11, 2014, she woke up in hospital to learn that the highest vertebra in her neck was broken, one of the main arteries to her brain was severed, and that she was tetraplegic.
The past provincial/national champion in hockey, rugby, ball hockey and boxing had barely survived being struck by a taxicab the day before while at a work conference in Toronto.
Ten years later, Hennessy will have an incredible journey to look back on from the past decade – from having to choose to live on, summoning the resiliency she learned from sport in her rehabilitation, adapting to the new realities of her disability, to rediscovering her love of physical activity in parasport.
There was also finding a new pursuit during COVID in paracanoe, qualifying for two Paralympic Games, coping with the overwhelming grief of her mother’s death a year before Paris 2024, and then the crowning moment of her story (so far): winning a Paralympic silver medal this summer.
So how does Hennessy plan to mark her life-versary? The answer is reflective of her story from the past 10 years – she’ll be living life to the fullest.
Ten years from the day of her accident, Hennessy will have just landed in Montevideo, Uruguay in advance of the Nov. 13-17 Paracanoe Pan American Championships. She’ll likely be drained from her 18-hour travel trek, and she’ll be getting ready to race in a few days, so there won’t be a lot of time for deep reflection.
“I’m going somewhere warm – does that count?” laughs Hennessy, whose schedule has been packed since the moment she got home from the Paralympics. “Ah man, I don’t know if I’ll ever stop. I’ve had the last few months ‘off’, but I didn’t stop.”
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Right after the Paris Games concluded, Canada’s Closing Ceremonies flag bearer took a little time for a vacation, which also doubled as a celebration of her 40th birthday. Since she landed back in Canada, Hennessy has participated in a pile of special events.
She presented awards at the Canada Sports Hall of Fame gala at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, she made sponsor appearances (for Petro-Canada at a Stittsville gas station running a fundraiser for caregivers, and for Air Canada in Toronto), and she was honoured by the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario and Canadian Athletes Now Fund in Toronto as well as at her home Ottawa River Canoe Club’s banquet.
There’s been plenty more, even an event to promote how Halloween can be made more accessible. And Hennessy’s also helping her dad sell his house, not to mention she’s testing out some new parasports.
“It’s action-packed,” smiles the Team Canada paddler and women’s wheelchair rugby player.
Silver medal the best result Hennessy could have hoped for at Paralympics
Given that 40th birthday milestone, you might wonder if all of this action is part of some kind of midlife crisis. But if you think that, then you don’t know Brianna Hennessy – she’s got a long history of attacking new opportunities and challenges like a bouncy ball shot out of a cannon.
With that kind of fire burning, it was very hard for the competitor inside her to accept that on the morning of the biggest race of her life, it was unrealistic that she’d have a chance to win it.
The TV broadcast of the women’s va’a canoe 200-metre Paralympic final didn’t do it justice, but the conditions were very challenging on race day, and put Hennessy at a particular disadvantage.
“It comes down to these fractions of a second,” Hennessy highlights. “I’m not sure the masses realize how much [conditions] impact our races.”
A year before the Paralympics, Hennessy had raced a World Cup event on the same course in Paris. With stands on the left side of the course and the right side open, wind would only be felt from one side, and as someone who paddles on the left side of her boat, the wind would impact her more than the right-side paddlers who were her chief rivals.
“When (coach) Joel (Hazzan) and I were training, I was trying not to get sort of eaten alive by this,” Hennessy notes. “It’s really hard when you’re sacrificing so much and you’re getting up every day to put your best effort in, and then when it comes down to it, you know you don’t have a chance.”
If there was no wind on race day, then Hennessy believed she could win, but the wind wound up being “as aggressive as I’ve experienced,” recalls Hennessy, who had won paracanoe silver medals at three consecutive world championships.
“I just tried to lock into that and be like, ‘This is my silver. I’ve gotten it for the last couple years. Now, I don’t want to give this up. I’m going to fight for it and see if I can pull this off despite the disadvantage.’
“In the final moments, I actually committed to it, which was very hard for me, because I’m the hardest on myself, and every athlete wants the dream of going after that gold.
“When I finished the race, I looked at Joel and I was like, ‘We did it.'”
Despite making “J-strokes” throughout the race in order to stay on course in her lane, Hennessy finished in 1 minute, 0.12 seconds to place second behind Great Britain’s Emma Wiggs, who has won gold at every world championships and Paralympics since women’s paracanoe was added to the international programme.
Hennessy held off Australian righty Susan Seipel in third by .27 seconds and finished 2.29 seconds ahead of the fourth-place finisher for the last spot on the podium, which she’d missed by just 1.105 seconds at the Tokyo Paralympics one year after taking up the sport.
When Hennessy received her medal, she broke down in tears on the podium. She was proud of her crowning athletic feat of course, but the medal meant more than that. Top of mind for Hennessy in that moment was her mom Norma, who died in January 2023 after battling chronic illness and debilitating migraines for 20 years.
“It was just this release. There was this extra layer of emotions going on that I had never experienced,” Hennessy reflects. “When my mom passed away, she left me a card saying, ‘Keep on your pace to Paris. I’ll see you in Paris. I’ll be there with you.’ And the closer I got to these moments, the closer I felt to my mom.”
During her race and throughout the Paralympics, Hennessy was wearing a red cardinal pendant with her mom’s ashes in it. Her cousin was wearing the same necklace in the stands, and her aunt (her mom’s only sister) was there, along with her dad.
“As soon as I crossed the finish line, usually I go and hug Emma right away, but I just had that moment where I kissed the necklace, and it was like, ‘Mom, we did it. I felt you here with me,’ and it was just super emotional because I felt so close to her, and I knew how proud she would have been that I persevered no matter the size of the hole in my heart.
“There was just a lot more I was overcoming in those moments than just the athletic performance. It all came together for me, and when I was on the podium and they gave me the medal, I just had a full meltdown.
“I looked up and my family was there, and we didn’t get to experience that in Tokyo, and just seeing my dad’s face, it melted my heart and just filled it up to the top. And I hadn’t had that feeling in my heart since my mom has been gone and it just gave me a moment of full happiness that I was after. It was pretty incredible.”
Meltdowns continue as Hennessy told news of flag bearer selection
Meticulous in their planning to maximize performance, Hennessy and Hazzan couldn’t have quite imagined what was to come after her medal win.
After the anxiety leading up to the Paralympic final, the physical effort from the race and the emotional explosion afterwards, it was time for many media interviews, drug testing, and finally a visit with her family around three hours after her race.
“I was fried. Once I got back to the hotel, I was just done,” recounts Hennessy, who still had her kayak semifinals and then a possible final on tap the next day, the last day of the Paralympics.
“I’m packing all my stuff up and Joel messages me: ‘I need you to put your Lululemon gear on and come down to the lobby.’
“And I pull a little-kid-with-pigtails-that-didn’t-get-their-lollipop, on-the-floor-of-the store, just like, ‘No-o-o-o!’
“I was so overtired. But he was like, ‘Trust me, just come down.’
“So I go down to the lobby and I get the call from Catherine (Gosselin-Després) at the CPC and she asked me to be the flag bearer… and I just have another full meltdown.”
Hennessy was “bawling my eyes out” at the news of such a “meaningful” honour, and to “even be considered for this among so many incredible athletes.”
“My adrenaline just took a rocket ship to the moon again,” smiles Hennessy, who went back to her room and started writing down her thoughts about carrying the flag, which she felt was important since her voice would be representing many Canadian athletes.
After tossing and turning with her brain running most of the night, Hennessy ended up falling asleep on the physiotherapy table an hour before her kayak race the next day.
Hazzan roused her with a bottle of Coke, which she loves and hoped would give her a little sugar rush. Hennessy wound up winning her semifinal kayak heat and qualified for the final, where she finished fourth.
Her goal for Paris had been to win a medal in canoe, and then whatever might happen in kayak was a bonus. Hennessy was fully satisfied with her fourth-place result, and then treasured having Hazzan behind her as she and co-flag bearer Nicholas Bennett carried the maple leaf into the Stade de France.
Among the reflections Hennessy recorded were powerful messages on the importance of the Paralympics.
“In those moments of celebrating our abilities and not our disabilities, (the Paralympics provide) an overall feeling of acceptance and moment of normalcy, in a life that, outside of parasport, is anything but normal,” writes the Gloucester High School and University of Ottawa grad.
“Paralympians come together over our worldwide passion for sport, but for people with disabilities, it means so much more. It is our ongoing rehab and recovery, our reintegrations back into our communities. It is our safe space to have others to relate to or learn from.”
Hennessy thanks her therapists for guiding her on her path to recovery from her accident, but adds that it was the players at the Ottawa Stingers wheelchair rugby club who showed her that she could truly fight to regain some independence in her life.
“Any city where the Paralympics lands,” she continues, “has a bigger job of educating the masses on how much we are still capable of despite our health issues or differences. That we are still people no matter our shape or form. (…) That we cherish life enough to fight back and find a new purpose.”
Hennessy underlines that people with disabilities are capable of achieving “phenomenal things,” but that being offered those opportunities in society is critical.
“Many of us have danced with death and are lucky to be here,” she adds. “Each comeback survival story is its own phenomenal example showing its possible to defy all odds… and to never lose hope. Reminding us of the strength of the raw human spirit. That no matter what is stripped away from a person physically, we can still honour the fundamental pillars of humanity – to be empathetic, patient, non judgemental, considerate, forgiving, look for new positive perspectives, and humility in each new day.
“Unity and universality. Paralympics is our platform, to finally have a voice for us and the next generations to come. That catastrophic tragedies, full of pain, suffering and agony, can still be healed through the power of sport.”
Hennessy’s retirement plans nowhere in sight
Having fully embraced the Paralympic spirit, Hennessy fully wants to return to a future Games, and she’s even starting to try some more sports that could get her back there.
After each Games, every athlete needs to decide what’s next and whether they want to press on towards the next ones, she notes, which can be especially true of athletes entering their 40s. But for Hennessy, the debate was pretty short.
“My mom always said to me, ‘Whatever situation you’re in, think about where you were a year before. Think about where you are now. Think about where you’ll be in the future,'” Hennessy explains. “I said to Joel, ‘If we had dinner in 20 years from now to catch up, would we have regrets that we didn’t keep pushing to try and go after that goal?’
“For an athlete to medal, or a coach to have an athlete that medals, it can be the pinnacle of what you’re going for. But I said to him, ‘What if we got a world champion? What if we got gold?’
“If we stop now, I would lose all this hard work, when we’re breathing down Emma’s neck, and we’ve already instilled fear in her, and she knows we’re coming, and we’re biting her ankles.
“And both of us just had this look on our face, ‘Ya, we’d regret it.'”
Although she and her top rival Wiggs have become great friends, Hennessy says her competitiveness won’t be satisfied until she beats her.
Being #1 is Hennessy’s main future goal on water, but she also wants to explore other sports. Her first parasport love, wheelchair rugby, will always be part of her pursuits.
With her strength coach Andrea Nicholls and the Schmidt family that founded ORCC heavily involved in skiing, Hennessy plans to try sit-skiing this winter, perhaps both alpine and cross-country.
She’s also been out to the track for wheelchair racing and hopes to get a roller setup at home for the winter.
“On the para side, you can climb the ladder a lot quicker. It’s not going to take 20 years,” Hennessy says of her interest in potentially pursuing new sports.
In her track workouts, she currently pushes her chair “like a rugby player” and has a new technique to learn.
“I like going fast and I have that endurance part from canoe-kayak. That could transition over well to pushing a racing chair. It’s almost a combination, in some ways, of paddling and wheelchair rugby,” Hennessy indicates, noting her canoe race is a minute long, and athletics has different distances available (and many medals up for grabs).
“I’m definitely starting to lean towards using that as cross training, and see where it goes,” she adds. “I feel like I’m in great shape. I have some muscle mass already from paddling, so I don’t think it would take me that long to catch up or maybe have potential.”
But Hennessy has a couple events on the horizon in her original sports to take care of first.
The Pan American paracanoe competition hadn’t been on her calendar until she got home to Ottawa and learned about it. The goal isn’t for her to be in peak form like at the Paralympics, but it’s important for her to be there, she explains. Although paracanoe is a Paralympic sport, it’s still fighting for inclusion in the Parapan Am Games.
“Last time [Parapans] happened, I was all sad,” Hennessy recalls. “It’s an incredible event. I wanted to go. Wheelchair rugby and everyone was there.”
ORCC’s L.A. Schmidt, who acted as a leader in the push to add women’s canoe events to the Olympics and Paralympics, has also helped advocate for paracanoe’s inclusion in Pan American competition.
“I want to help any way I can to get this application through,” Hennessy notes.
After that trip, Hennessy will be headed back to Paris for another competition that has an advocacy twist. Wheelchair rugby is a mixed sport at the Paralympics, but the competition overwhelmingly features male players. The Dec. 2-8 Women’s Cup international wheelchair rugby tournament in France will serve as an opportunity to showcase the merits of a women’s division.
“Women’s wheelchair rugby at the Paralympics would be amazing,” Hennessy raves. “Even if they end up doing it in like 10 or 15 years and I have to come out of retirement, you’re gonna see me there.”