Olympic songbird
There was a Cape Breton connection in the choir for opening ceremonies
There are no Cape Bretoners competing in the Winter Olympics this month in Korea but a young girl with strong island connections was front and centre during the opening ceremonies.
Ascher Barron is the eight-year-old daughter of Jody Barron who was born and raised in Ingonish before his studies took him around the world and to a new life and a new family in South Korea for the past 16 years.
His daughter was part of the Korean Rainbow choir that sang their country’s national anthem during the opening ceremonies.
She was also chosen to carry a traditional Korean lantern “lighting the way” for flag bearers from Team Canada and later Team USA.
“The one thing she remembers the most was that the Canadians were really loud but the Americans were louder — singing at the top of their lungs,” Jody Barron said during a phone interview from Seoul.
Many parallels of the trials and tribulations that led to an Olympic athlete’s participation in the Games could be made with Ascher’s surprisingly gruelling journey to those ceremonies, he said.
Originally, all 70 members of her choir were set to sing in the opening and closing ceremonies. That changed to only the opening ceremonies to make room for a Korean opera singer in the closing c eremonies.
After many lengthy practices, the choir was then cut to 44 members because students from the city of Pyeongchang insisted on being involved.
Further cuts were made to accommodate North Korean performers that brought the original choir number’s participation to 37.
Even after Ascher made that final 37, officials warned her that the choir could be cut again to 32.
Though that didn’t happen, she maintained her composure through months of gruelling practice sessions until her actual participation in the ceremonies, according to her father.
After one of the final cuts and with the fear of another coming, he asked his daughter if she wanted to come home.
He was filled with pride when she informed him she had one more round in her, which is an expression he uses when he competes in ju-jitsu tournaments.
“When she made it, it was just like this powerful sense of she is in the Olympics and we are going to see her and she’s gone through all of this and she is only eight years old,” he said.
“I went through this incredible sense of pride and wisdom and the way life moves. It
was so many things at one time.”
Her parents proudly watched her performance from inside the stadium and then again and again on replays.
“I’m an athlete myself. I still compete in the world championships in ju-jitsu,” the 44-yearold said.
“I never made the Olympic team. I finished fourth in the worlds in 1991 but I never got the opportunity to try out for wresting or judo. For me this was an incredible feeling where she was going where I couldn’t go.”
One of the rewards Ascher requested for sticking it out was Kraft Dinner, something a cousin in Ingonish introduced her to when she was in Cape Breton last summer to visit her grandparents, Jeannette and Jerry Barron.
That cheesy treat is not her only new Cape Breton-based influence.
During that recent visit she developed a keen interest in the Highland Village and asked her father to get her books about it.
“She was interested in the differences in the French and the Irish. It’s really complicated. My grandparents are French and Irish and different places and now she has her mother’s Korean. That’s a lot of culture.”
Her other reward for making the final cut was a trip to the Disney theme park in Tokyo where she spent this week with an aunt.