Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Tara O'Doherty — finding her way to laughter again

"Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there one day." - A.A. Milne, Winnie-The-Pooh She's a high-energy gal. Always up. Always ready for the next adventure. And there's absolutely no pretence.
opinion_altastates1

"Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there one day."

- A.A. Milne, Winnie-The-Pooh

She's a high-energy gal. Always up. Always ready for the next adventure. And there's absolutely no pretence. Not a hint of self-importance to her persona... she knows exactly who she is. As for her engagement with life... hmm, how could I put this? Whether she's helping a client develop a hot, new radio ad for her employer Mountain FM or entertaining us onstage or on-film with her comic genius, Whistler's Tara O'Doherty is fearless. She embraces life like a mama bear embraces her cubs. Ferociously. But she does it with such an infectious sense of humour that you can't help but be swept along in her happy wake...

Alas, it wasn't always this way. Not so long ago, Tara was a prisoner of a living nightmare.

Imagine waking up in the morning and not recognizing the face peering back at you in the mirror. Imagine being forced to spend endless hours lying in a dark room — day after day, week after week — searching in vain for the person you once were. Wondering what happened. Where did the positive energy go? How did all the happiness disappear?

It seemed so inconsequential at the time. When Tara slipped on some ice and banged her head on her Whistler driveway in December of 2008, she had no idea how much that innocent fall would change her life. But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself again. Let's go back to the beginning.

"I grew up in the east end of Toronto — in the Beaches area," she starts. A now oh-so-gentrified part of the city, the late-1970s Beaches neighbourhood of Tara's memory was still a multi-cultural, multi-class kind of place. "It was such a great environment to grow up in — you know, very social: block parties and lemonade stands and water-balloon fights." Mom was an administrator and dad was a firefighter. Sports played a big part in family life. "I was a tomboy from the get-go," she says. "And very competitive." She laughs. "I was the middle child between two brothers. What else can you expect?"

Sports like t-ball and soccer and running — those were the things that really turned her on in life. "I could run fast, you know, really fast. And I knew that from a pretty young age. So I just ran and ran and ran." She became a sprinter — won silver at the Colgate Women's Games as a 12-year-old — and was quickly scooped up by the coaches of a junior development program at the University of Toronto.

"So off I'd go every day after school," she recounts. "Elite track and field training five days a week." Meanwhile she was also playing rep soccer, training and attending tournaments around Southern Ontario just about every weekend. It was a crazy schedule, and the workload soon began to exact a toll on her body.

"It all came to a head when I tore both my Achilles tendons," she tells me. Both? "Yeah. It sucked," she says. And smiles a little sadly. "And it kinda made me reassess my goals. I was 18 years old. I'd been going to meets and championships and tournaments for a so long — and there was so much pressure from coaches and peers to perform now — I just got tired of it." The fact that she'd now "discovered" boys, well, that had played into Tara's decision too.

Whatever. Onward and upward. Still, she says it took a while for her to figure out what she wanted to do next. "I graduated from high school and volunteered at a hospital where I worked with kids suffering from respiratory ailments." She was so touched by their plight, she says, that she decided to go back to school and study to become a respiratory therapist. "I hit the wall after my second year," she admits. "I'd never struggled in school before. This was my first failure..."

Her family had moved to Guelph by then. So that's where she went. She got a job. Met a guy. And that seemed to be that. But something niggled in the back of Tara's mind. What if this guy wasn't the right guy? By 1995 the doubts had won out. "It was an amicable split," she says. "But we spent five years together — that leaves a mark."

Things happen in life sometimes that have no rhyme or reason. They just happen. When Tara first met Jason McLean during a girl's night out in nearby London, she knew he was a special guy. "Boy! Did I ever. He melted my heart. He was like no one I'd ever met before." She says they talked and talked and talked. When he asked if he could call her, she didn't hesitate. "I was already head-over-heels," she says.

They seemed made for each other. "He introduced me to the music of jazz greats John Coltrane and Duke Ellington. He taught me how to laugh at myself. How to have fun. But I was still afraid. Was I over the last relationship? I wasn't sure."

So she decided to end the new affair. "A month later, I get a call. It's Jason. 'Do you want to be with me,' he asks. I'm so torn... But I say no. 'OK then," he says. 'I'm jumping in the car with a friend and heading to Whistler.' Bye honey...

Ten years go by. Tara gets a job working in a casino. She meets another guy, falls in love and they get married. "We had a big lavish wedding," she says. "And I thought he really was the one." She sighs. " But he wasn't." They split up soon after.

The next part of the story is pure schmaltz (but I love it). Out of the blue, a casino-worker friend re-connects her with old flame Jason. "Literally hands me his cell phone and says: 'speak.'" Tara smiles. "It was awkward for all of five seconds. After that, it was like 10 years had never happened." The smile grows wider. "Before I knew it, I'd booked myself a flight to Whistler and was headed out west."

Whatever happened on that week-long trip must have been mighty powerful. For less than six months later, Tara quit her job, packed up her truck and moved to Whistler. "I arrived on April 6, 2006," she says proudly. It was the boldest thing she'd ever done. "I didn't know a soul," she says. "And I'd never skied or snowboarded. But that was OK. I had love."

Still, it didn't take her long to find her place. By the time the winter of 2008 hit, Tara considered herself a full-on Whistlerite. She was now manager of client care at the Royal Bank, a better ("but still struggling") snowboarder, and she and Jason had just moved in to their own home. What could possibly go wrong?

Ha! Her fall on the icy driveway that December was the last thing she expected to happen. "I knew when I saw my feet fly over my head that I was in trouble," she says. And shrugs. "But I didn't pass out or anything. I just shook it off. 'You're fine,' I told myself."

But she wasn't. And the next few weeks and months saw her symptoms worsen. She had tests and RMIs and brain scans. But they showed nothing conclusive. She was still working, of course. Still trying to power through like nothing was wrong. But her condition was not improving.

"By this point, I'm a mess. I'm stuttering, can't sleep, can't remember anything, I'm always in a bad mood... I really think I'm going crazy." She sighs. "It was a scary time. I couldn't remember what 'Tara' was like anymore. I couldn't process life." She was finally diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome. "I was told: no stimulation of any kind. No TV, no computer. You have to let your brain rest." Another long sigh. "So I sat in the dark in my bedroom for sixteen hours a day."

The path to recovery was long and painful and required frequent trips to the city to work with therapists at the GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre. Jason, she says, "was his usual amazing self and was at my side every step of the way." As were her local gal pals. "They kept reminding me I wasn't alone in this. So much love there..."

In terms of specific help, two Whistlerites stand out. "The first was John Blok at the Core Fitness Centre. I went to see him in 2010 and I explained my case. 'If I could only get my body going again,' I said, 'maybe my brain would follow along...' So John set me up with a low-impact workout that wouldn't raise my blood pressure but would get me fit nonetheless." She smiles. "And it worked! The fitter I got, the better I felt."

There was one final — and totally unexpected — source of new healing. And that came when she was introduced to actor/writer/director Angie Nolan. "I'd barely met her and she was already inviting me to work on a film project," says Tara. And laughs. "Then she asked me if I wanted to be in a play. 'Sure,' I said. But I was scared shitless. I had no experience. Besides — how was I gonna remember my lines?"

No problem. With Angie's coaching and Tara's natural go-for-it style, the twosome made it work. "When I got my first laugh on-stage," she says, "wow!' It was like the best drug I'd ever tasted. I realized right then that I wanted to do more — I wanted to make people laugh." Fortunately for us, she's been doing that ever since.