Bio

Canadian Paralympic Team Member in 2021 and 2024 in para canoe and three-time world championships silver medallist.

Silver medallist at 2024 Paralympic Summer Games in 200m VL2.

Fourth place finish at 2024 Paralympic Summer Games in 200m KL1.

Selected as one of Canada's flag bearers for the Closing Ceremonies of Paris 2024. 

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In 2024 at the Para canoe world championships, Hennessy won the silver medal for the third straight year in the women’s VL2 200-metre. She earned quota spots for Canada at the 2023 worlds in the VL2 and KL1 earning bronze in the latter and repeating her performances from the 2022 worlds.

Hennessy competed in two events in her Paralympic Games debut in 2021 placing fifth in the VL2 and eighth in the KL1. She earned a berth for her first Paralympic Games with a fourth-place finish in the women’s VL2 200-m at a World Cup event in Hungary held in May 2021. Her qualification for Tokyo came less than two years after she took up the sport of Para canoe.

Two years after her injury in 2014, Hennessy was initially introduced to wheelchair rugby by the Ottawa Hospital Rehabilitation Centre. She grew up in a sports family and Hennessy herself played AA hockey, provincial-level rugby and was an amateur boxing champ in Ontario before her accident at age 30.

Playing against mostly men in wheelchair rugby, Hennessy made the Ontario provincial team. She was also the lone Canadian woman to compete in the elite level U.S. Quad Rugby Association for the Tampa Bay Generals.

It was wheelchair rugby teammate and Paralympian Patrice Dagenais who suggested she try Para canoe as the pandemic shut down team events. She joined the Ottawa River Canoe Club and coach Joel Hazzan, and attended training camps in Victoria and Vancouver before competing at the Paralympic team trials which led her to the opportunity in Hungary.