Barbara Balfour

Today Dr. Kimmaliardjuk’s hands are sewing tiny blood vessels on still-beating hearts, repairing torn coronary tissue and taking the surgical lead in the operating room as she completes the sixth and final year of her residency in Ottawa. The 30-year-old is not only the first Inuk heart surgeon in Canada, she is one of only a handful of female cardiac surgeons to do a residency at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute – milestones she says she couldn’t have reached without the support of her family.

Here is where Edith Piaf sang, Marlene Dietrich had her own dressing room and Axl Rose once bit a security guard on the leg (losing his Converse hightops in the process, which the hotel gave away on Instagram 10 years later).

From world-class museums and a thriving arts and culture scene, to eclectic boutiques and award-winning restaurants, Ottawa-Gatineau could keep visitors busy for weeks. But if you have only 24 hours to spare, ensure you make the most of it with these suggestions.

Candace Cameron Bure is bringing classy back - one act of kindness at a time. Inspired by her stint as cohost of the daytime talk show "The View," where she often faced heated debates as the only conservative Christian voice on the panel, Bure decided to write a book on how to be kind under fire.

For those who don’t give much thought to the origin of everyday household items, the Canadian roots of the disposable trash bag may come as a surprise. Every day, Canadians buy more than a million Glad garbage bags, an essential staple item created in 1950 by Canadian inventors Harry Wasylyk and Larry Hansen. Originally intended for commercial use, the polyethelene bags were first sold to the Winnipeg General Hospital before Union Carbide Company bought the idea in the 1960s. They then began manufacturing them for household use under the brand name of Glad.

Serious tweaks need to be made to client-focused reforms proposed by the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), industry leaders said recently at the annual symposium of Advocis, the Financial Advisors Association of Canada. The CSA, an umbrella group for provincial securities watchdogs, proposed changes on Sept. 13 that would, among other things, prohibit early withdrawal fees for mutual funds, known as deferred sales charges (DSCs), as well as implement higher standards for conflict-of-interest, know-your-product (KYP) and know-your-client (KYC) requirements. The goal of the reforms is to improve outcomes for retail investors, better align the interests of dealers, portfolio managers and their representatives with those of their clients and clarify the terms of their relationship. They're a response to rising concerns expressed in CSA-led consultations that clients are not meeting their investing goals.

As newlyweds, Galen Nuttall and his wife weren't making much money, so visits to Starbucks occurred at most twice a year, usually over happy hour. But as their income increased, so did their trips to coffee houses; the family Honda was traded in for an Audi, and their condominium became a four-bedroom house. Former luxuries had now become necessities. Now a financial advisor based in Belleville, Ont., Mr. Nuttall has pared back to a Honda – which he may get rid of altogether since he works from home and rarely drinks coffee anymore. “What I’ve done is consider what it is I enjoy about each of those things and ask myself, ‘Is this a want or a luxury? Would this money be better off going somewhere else?’ " Mr. Nuttall’s personal experience in battling the phenomenon of “lifestyle creep,” which occurs when standards of living rise along with discretionary income, has enabled him to empower his own clients to curb their spending habits.

When assessing the fate of the modern-day financial advisor, it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most adaptable to change.

In today’s new model of real estate investment, a prospective investor can search for projects of interest on a laptop and, several mouse clicks later, send funds along. With no middlemen and no banks to decide which projects are worthy of financing, investment opportunities are no longer restricted to the very wealthy or the tried-and-true. “This is investing democratized, and this is how capital will be formed going forward,”

Forget the fact that Ottawa was once coined the “city that fun forgot” — the adage couldn’t be further from the truth. Ottawa’s burgeoning culinary scene proves its fun score is actually on the rise. What better way to disprove the stereotype of a stodgy government town than by noshing your way through boozy artisanal ice creams and organic fruit-studded popsicles? Here are our top four spots in the city for enjoying a frozen refreshment.

The days when women would simply throw on an old T-shirt to exercise are long gone. Instead, in today's ever more fitness and fashion conscious world, a growing number are willing to pay as much for a new gym outfit as they do for a new formal party dress. This has led to a big increase over recent years in the value of the women's sportswear market.

While cleaning the bathroom of a home in the west end of Toronto, a young Filipino nanny tuned into a TED Talk that would change the course of her life’s journey. Working full-time as the live-in caregiver of two children, Ivah Camille Baban makes a habit of listening to podcasts while she cleans. On that fateful day, the 26-year-old found herself riveted by University of the People president Shai Reshef describing his innovative new institution – one offering an education she could actually afford, and degrees at a fraction of the cost of anywhere else. With more than 2,000 students registered from more than 150 countries, UoPeople is the world’s first non-profit, near-tuition-free, accredited online university.

Sometimes it takes a visionary to almost lose a life before he can change the lives of countless others. More than 15 years after AOL Inc. co-founder Ted Leonsis escaped death on a harrowing plane flight, Brian Scudamore found the inspiration he needed to transform his modest business into a home-service empire. Mr. Leonsis's now-famous list of "101 things to do before you die," which he later wrote about in his best-selling book The Business of Happiness, was inspired by the 35 minutes that ticked by as he prepared for a crash landing and realized he would die unhappy. The business tycoon's experience instilled in Mr. Scudamore a greater sense of urgency to live his life with passion – and rope in his employees, friends and family along the way.

Navigating the political and bureaucratic minefield of health law is not for the faint of heart. But as demographic realities add pressure to an already stressed system, opportunities for innovators may emerge