BOOKS
OPEN HEART, OPEN MIND
Clara Hughes
A
fter she was named the flagbearer for the opening ceremony of the Vancouver 2010
Winter Olympics, and faced an intense media scrum, Canadian cyclist and speed
skater Clara Hughes was stressed. Then she opened her email, and found an invitation to a
“brushing-off” ceremony. While other Olympic competitors went deep into their own sport
bubbles, Clara travelled to a Squamish First Nations reserve and took in a ceremony of
chanting, candles and more. An elder said to all present, “I cannot heal you of your pain.
Only you can heal yourself with your open heart and open mind.”
Openness is the watchword of Clara Hughes’s autobiography Open Heart, Open Mind.
Known for Olympic success and an inspiring spirit of sportsmanship and joy in pursuing excellence, Hughes’s life had many darker times. Born to an angry alcoholic father who moved
out when she was nine, Clara quickly became rebellious along with her older sister - stealing
at eight, smoking at eleven, partying hard beginning at thirteen. She relates this story with
an adult’s understanding of the dynamics of a dysfunctional family and the illusions she had
projected onto both her parents.
Clara’s life changed when she was sixteen and she watched Gaetan Boucher speed skating in the 1988 Calgary Olympic 2