[2] His father died from an appendectomy gone wrong when Fotheringham was two, and his mother remarried, with Allan taking his stepfather's surname.

[2] Upon graduation he studied English and political science at the University of British Columbia and worked at a variety of media outlets during his career.

[6] He was hired straight out of university by the Vancouver Sun during the heady times of the late 1960s, the final days of the old Bennett Socreds provincially and the advent of Pierre Trudeau federally.

[8] He is credited with coining the terms "Natural Governing Party" for the federal Liberals, and the "Holy Mother Corporation" for the CBC in the course of writing his column.

"[10] Fotheringham was a regular panelist for a decade in the latter years of the CBC Television program Front Page Challenge, having replaced the deceased Gordon Sinclair in 1984.

He had a national syndicated column that was in 20 newspapers, but he retired from regular contributions in 2007, after life-threatening complications from a colonoscopy led to his hospitalization for five months.

[13] Fotheringham continued to write occasionally for the Globe and for the National Post,[9] as well as a Calgary magazine called The Roughneck.