Smashing stigma

Cover story, page 2

Clara Hughes in “Clara’s Big Ride”

January 23 - 29, 2015

Cover Story

By Meagan SylvesterTV Media

Before March 2013, Clara Hughes was known as a six-

time Olympic medallist and the only athlete in history to win multiple medals in both Summer and Winter Games. And while those days are over, Hughes says her greatest victory was finally accepting help when depression nearly toppled her career.

But Hughes isn’t satisfied with being the face of mental health advocacy in Canada, said

Toronto-based filmmaker Larry Weinstein (“Our Man in Teh-ran,” 2013, “Inside Hana’s Suit-case,” 2009) in an exclusive in-terview with TV Media. Rather, what Hughes wants more than gold is to open the conversation about mental illness, to combat the crippling social stigma asso-ciated with it and to inspire those who suffer in silence to seek help.

In conjunction with Bell Me-dia’s annual Bell Let’s Talk Day campaign — a cross-country initiative geared towards pro-moting awareness of mental

health issues — Weinstein and Hughes recently joined forces in an hour-long “on the road” doc-umentary that chronicles Hughes’ 11,000-kilometre “suf-fer-fest” through the rough Ca-nadian terrain she now knows so well and the “devastatingly personal” stories she discovered along the way, Weinstein said.

But when the Emmy-nomi-nated and Gemini Award-win-ning director first met Hughes during the intense training peri-od a year prior to her ride, the outspoken athlete would make her opinion known: the film

An epic rideDirector Larry Weinstein follows cross-country ‘suffer-fest’ in CTV documentary

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A scene from “Clara’s Big Ride”

would not be about her, but rather a mosaic of Canadian voices from coast to coast. Cap off Bell Let’s Talk Day 2015 with the national premiere of “Clara’s Big Ride” airing Wednesday, Jan. 28, on CTV

“We spoke to a number of young Canadians around the country who told their stories to the camera, and often for the first time,” said Weinstein, whose career has been spent documenting the lives of fa-mous composers. “And that was very difficult for me … I kept thinking ‘I can’t do this,’ you can’t start weeping as your interviewee is telling the story. You have to maintain some dis-tance, or do you? It’s all about compassion.”

Compassion, he continued, is what they had hoped the film would be about.

As Hughes describes in an early screener of the documen-tary, the stigma surrounding mental illness cannot be fought without understanding, a transition in language prac-tices and education.

“The person struggling feels like they should be ashamed of who they are and they should try to fix themselves,” said Hughes, who battled depres-sion for months before seeking help. “But I’m talking about connecting with people and putting them on the podium. That, for me, is what this ride is all about.”

Between 105 communities, 235 events, 23,000 youth and two moose sightings, the film explores what Weinstein calls “diverse” experiences of men-tal health, as “it is very impor-tant to never generalize,” the “Burnt Toast” (2005) director said. “Everyone has different circumstances and you have to be aware of that.”

Of the thousands of youth that came forward to meet Hughes, Weinstein said one ex-perience in particular contin-ues to stay with him since the end of production in mid-De-cember 2014.

“This was actually a place that wasn’t part of the ride, Clara and Peter (her husband) had been there before and wanted to take a plane,” Wein-stein said of the off-road trek. “It’s something that deserves its own film.”

The community of Nain, N.L., the northernmost perma-nent settlement in the prov-ince, is like a microcosm for all of Canada, Weinstein says, in terms of young people who have lost their identities and who suffer severe depression as a result.

In a town of roughly 1,200 people, up to 23 suicides have been reported in a single year, said Weinstein, but he believes the close-knit community is now entering a recovery phase thanks to integral social pro-grams in the area.

This story, along with one young woman whose family doctor advised her not to speak openly about her condition, are the kinds of stories Hughes set out to find on her epic cross-country ride that started in To-ronto and practically circled the country before she would even-tually cross the finish line in Ot-tawa. But not as many people came forward as Hughes and Weinstein had hoped.

“We tried to reach out to people through new media to see if people would tell their stories, and it was not an over-whelming response,” said Weinsten, who was ap-proached by CTV to film the documentary. “It’s a sign that the stigma is very much alive.”

Despite these challenges, Hughes vowed she would “ride through the bones in her feet” to complete the excruciating challenge, and it was her deter-mination that inspired Wein-stein and his crew, despite hav-ing limited access and inter-view time.

Like many Canadians, Wein-stein says his view of Hughes is close to that of “super wom-an,” but she’s also vulnerable and a human being, taking many stories to heart.

Odds are you know someone who has suffered from or is cur-rently suffering from mental ill-ness. It’s time to smash the stig-ma associated with it that keeps people from talking about their mental health and seeking help. Cap off Bell Let’s Talk Day with the riveting docu-mentary “Clara’s Big Ride” from Gemini Award-winning director Larry Weinstein when it premieres nationally Wednes-day, Jan. 28, on CTV.

Cover Story

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