Nicole Atkinson has been active all her life, taking part in activities like hiking, snowboarding, lacrosse and hockey. In fact, she’s fresh off the ice from a hockey game when she takes the call to share her story—a testament to how far she’s come since that day she suffered a seizure in August 2022.

When I think of my dad, I think of his smile first, and the chuckle that would usually follow it. Dad—whose name was Alvin Rehberg, or ‘Big Al’ to his friends—was a solid six-foot-three, with arms I always felt safe in. He loved his girls—me and my younger sister, Hayley—more than anything, and I never doubted that he would be there if we needed him.

Rebecca Grundy believed in using her voice for change. She’d been working as a government lobbyist for the Progressive Conservative (PC) party in Ontario and as a successful public relations and communications professional. In the latter, she worked on campaigns for Rethink Breast Cancer and lobbied to bring Novocure’s Optune device, a wearable treatment for glioblastoma, to Canada.