After the accident, doctors warned that I might die. They told my parents to come quickly. 

I lived—but the future disappeared. Time became a velvet void. Days and weeks passed beyond memory. The months and years that followed survive only in fragments. At first, consciousness returned in flashes—a face, a voice, a hospital room, then nothing again. In one of those flashes came the thought:

“I’m 24 years old, and I’ve done nothing with my life.” 

It was one of the first clear thoughts I remember after surfacing from a coma caused by a severe traumatic brain injury.

It lasted only a moment, but it changed something. For the first time, I was thinking beyond the hospital bed. I was imagining. Planning. Beginning to believe there might still be a life waiting for me.

Healing came through small acts repeated over time—walking, cycling, playing guitar, memorizing, studying, creating, laughing, and reconnecting with others. Each became a way of rebuilding my mind and restoring my sense of possibility. Together, those experiences shaped my work as a writer, broadcaster, speaker, and facilitator. They also left me with two questions:

What happens when the future disappears?

How do we imagine it back into view?

Those questions became the foundation of Updrafts: Seven Ways Up, my signature keynote and a book now in development. It explores seven practices that helped me rebuild hope, possibility, and a meaningful future.

Drawing on lived experience, storytelling, and research, Updrafts: Seven Ways Up explores possibility, direction, memory, humour, vitality, creation, and belonging—and invites audiences to consider how people begin again after disruption and make the future imaginable.

I speak to healthcare organizations, rehabilitation and brain injury programs, mental health and wellness conferences, educational institutions, nonprofits, arts and culture organizations, leadership teams, and community groups.

Updrafts: Seven Ways Up is especially relevant for audiences navigating:

• injury, illness, trauma, or major life change;
• uncertainty, burnout, or disrupted identity;
• caregiving and rehabilitation;
• creativity, resilience, and personal renewal;
• organizational or community transition.

Each presentation can be adapted to the audience while preserving the central message: people move forward when the future becomes imaginable again.

For more than twenty-five years, I have explored how stories shape identity, belonging, healing, and our ability to imagine what comes next.

As a national host and producer with CBC Radio, I created documentaries, dramas, and broadcasts about memory, resilience, creativity, and human change. My work includes the Ideas program Updrafts and the national series Against the Odds, both of which examined brain injury and long-term recovery through story, science, and sound.

I have also taught at the university level, written for national publications, led public conversations, and managed major cultural and community initiatives.

Today, I bring those experiences together through keynote speaking and related workshops. My work combines lived experience, narrative craft, research, humour, and practical insight to help audiences move from uncertainty to possibility.

Updrafts: Seven Ways Up is available as a 45–60 minute keynote, a 90-minute presentation and discussion, or a keynote-plus-workshop package adapted to your audience.

Presentations can be tailored for healthcare, rehabilitation, education, nonprofit, arts, leadership, and community settings.

To discuss your event, audience, format, or availability, contact Allan.

Inspire your audience to imagine what's possible.