TORONTO — As budding magician David Grainger struggled to show master illusionist David Copperfield his best trick Wednesday, the look on David's mother's face said it all. Magic was at work.

David, 12, sustained massive physical and brain injuries when he was struck by a car in early May. He spent five weeks in a coma and didn't utter a word for nearly three months.

His mother, Nancy Lamont, describes his battle to regain speech, the use of his hands, the ability to sit up and virtually everything else he'd ever learned as a trip back to "Square 1, in a lot of ways."

Yet here was David, showing one of the world's most famous magicians tricks requiring manual and cognitive dexterity - and doing it before a phalanx of cameras gathered to record Copperfield's visit to Toronto's Bloorview MacMillan Children's Centre, where David is undergoing rehabilitation.

"He's more and more like my old boy," Lamont, of Orangeville, Ont., said of her excited son, who has taken to magic like a duck to water.

"It just gives him something to look forward to. . . . It just helps him feel much better about himself."

"Everybody says since you have the same name as him (Copperfield) you'll be good too," David said proudly of his budding magic skills.

David is one of several lucky children from the centre who've been taking part in Project Magic, an imaginative program Copperfield pioneered 20 years ago with the help of occupational therapist Julie DeJean.

"We're real proud of it," Copperfield told reporters before delivering a workshop on using magic in rehabilitation for 125 occupational, speech and physiotherapists from around Ontario.

The idea is simple, but ingenious. Many of the skills needed to perform magic tricks - motor skills, communication, problem solving, sequencing and practise, practise, practise - are the very things therapists spend hours working on with patients like David.

"For a lot of these kids, whether it's fine motor or gross motor skills that you're working on, or functional skills in tying a shoe or buttoning clothing, there's types of magic that do that same sort of activity," DeJean explained.

"The beauty in magic is it's a lot more fun and a lot more entertaining than stacking cones or lifting weights."

Finding a way to make therapy fun is key to keeping children motivated to push through the pain and frustration inherent in the rehabilitation process.

"After many months of therapy, I think the kids find that it's tedious and it's very hard," said Salma Kassam, an occupational therapist at Bloorview MacMillan.

"And it's always difficult to find things that are innovative and motivating for the kids. It's just been the little spark that's ignited them, I think."

She and others see a huge difference in David since he began working with magician Rob Fishbaum, one of several local performers who volunteered to teach magic classes as part of the program.

"He's been here for many months and there's very few things that he's able to do that he could do before," Kassam said of David.

"And to find him something that he feels mastery over and he feels great about has been phenomenal. He wants to practise all the time."

Fishbaum was amazed by the progress he's seen during the five-week program.

It's wonderful. In such a short period of time . . . the kids have progressed beyond my expectations, I have to tell you," he said.

"Just to see David's smile makes it all worthwhile."