If you’re reading this, you may have heard about my motorcycle mishap more than a year ago and I’m happy to say, it’s going to take more than a 50-metre flight at highway speeds to stop me — although that was a pretty effective trick. On Aug. 26, 2025, at 1:13 p.m., a time of crash I overheard from paramedics and thought ‘13:13, that’s cool’ as they expertly stripped me down, secured a tourniquet over my mangled right leg, and cut through the commotion with a call of “ketamine in,” throwing my consciousness into a sea of stars and my life into a sharp left turn. I was on the fifth day of a five-day motorcycle trip riding from Windsor to Ottawa and back again. It’s the kind of trip that convinced me to start riding in the first place. If you’ve ever seen the ‘Long Way’ series of motorcycle rides featuring Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, you’ll have a sense of the adventure I was chasing. And it was an incredible trip. Riding under blue skies and brilliant sunshine to Erieau before opening up into the escarpment of eastern Ontario, a jaunt through the capital, an impromptu excursion into the jewel that is Gatineau Park, winding through the wilderness sprawling out from Algonquin Park, all while visiting friends and family along the way. But, on my last afternoon of planned riding, my little scrambler was no match for the weight of a two-tonne truck. The impact was on my right side. It sent me hurtling through the air. Then cartwheeling off the ground. Then, finally, rolling to a rest onto my back. Despite all the bouncing and thrashing, I fully expected to get up and set off into a rage. When I saw my leg — that was no longer my immediate concern. “That’s not good,” I thought. “This is going to be a thing.” And a thing it was. Emergency surgery My leg had been partially severed below the knee and was currently stuck at a 90-degree angle from its usual, non-90-degree position, swinging gently as the adrenaline no doubt blunted the pain and bystanders quickly appeared at my side. Someone squeezed my hand. Another tried to take off my helmet — a big no-no for riders involved in a crash. As I tried to swat the hand away from my helmet strap, I felt a surge of pain and realized my right arm was no longer under my control. I was stuck on a ditch bank about an hour’s drive southwest of Barrie and wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. The paramedics were not far away. I can’t remember just how quickly they arrived, but it felt fast. One secured the band over my right thigh and tightened — not a pleasant experience. My leg turned a sickening shade of dead fish grey, and I said a quiet goodbye to my appendage. “It’s been nice knowing you,” I said to myself, as the paramedics worked to secure me. After being strapped to the stretcher, I was raced to an Ornge Air Ambulance, where a light rain showered the transfer to the helicopter and I was flown to the emergency department at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. By 2:39 p.m., I was already on an emergency room operating table, and the professionals overseeing my care had done the first X-rays to assess the damage before getting to work stitching me back up. I woke up in a recovery room just a couple hours later, groggy and shocked — my leg was still in its proper place. The emergency surgery had been a success. But I wasn’t done. I was wheeled in for a second surgery that day to fix a nail, as the surgeon called it, to stabilize my shattered tibia. I thought, ‘All I need is a nail? Great!’ I later learned that a tibial nail is a rod set into the bone. Not quite the nail I had in mind. Fine by me — I still had my leg. It would be more than a week before I could be prepped for my third surgery to rebuild my shattered shoulder and bind my clavicle back together with a metal plate, a screw, and a couple of anchors to keep everything in place. After all the poking and prodding over 29 days in Canada’s largest trauma hospital, I was wearifully grateful to go back to Windsor, where a bed was waiting for me at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare. The road to recovery At the risk of this becoming a long sob story, let me just say getting better hasn’t been easy and my path back to the desk not as straightforward as I would have imagined. When I was finally released from hospital in mid-November of last year, I was excited to be home. I could make my own coffee. Cook my own meals. Sleep in my own bed. I was in for a rude awakening. The excitement didn’t last long. Simple tasks took all my energy. Putting plates away felt like Olympic powerlifting. Climbing stairs like summiting some steep peak. My frailty hurt almost as much as the crash. I’m not sure when it sunk in that ‘getting back to normal’ was going to be a long way off, but I’ve settled into that idea now. I’ve learned recovery is not a linear route that sees improvements each day. There’s fear you’ll never be right again. There’s pain to remind you how close you came to a premature exit. And moving forward sometimes means moving backward. I wasn’t as capable as I had hoped to be at various points along my recovery and it had me down. There was also a sense of disappointment at my woe-is-me-self-indulgence as I cursed my luck, with all my limbs intact, while others have suffered far worse fates and seemed sunnier than I could ever imagine again. While my mindset has shifted for the better, one thing will never change — I wish the crash had never happened. It will be a lifelong regret. But, as cliché as it may be, I now have a second lease on life, and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity. Thanks to the tremendous support around me, first and foremost my poor mother who I stressed half to death, I’m in a much better place now than I was when I was hoisted out of a ditch. I cannot say thank you enough to the paramedics that rushed to my side, the emergency room team that saved my leg, the surgeons that patched me up, the nurses and doctors who managed my care, and the physiotherapists that helped me get strong again. Thank you to my newsroom co-workers who were quick to lend a hand in my time of need and fill the gap I left behind. And a final thank you to the viewers who shared warm well wishes that were more than humbling, and I hope they’ll spare me a little grace as I shake off the rust from a yearlong layoff. I’ll see you on TV.
