Mike MacDonald – Ailing Comedian Raises Awareness of Importance of Testing for Hep C

 For a 57-year-old Ottawa comic in need of a new liver, Mike MacDonald is in a good space these days. Comedians from coast-to-coast are holding fundraisers for Canada’s legendary King of Stand-up Comedy, raising money to help MacDonald pay his medical bills as he battles the Hepatitis C virus that he contracted

Ottawa Life Editorial: Win with Wynne

 Kathleen Wynne is Ontario’s best bet for the future. Dalton McGuinty is the most successful Ottawa-based politician to ever serve in the Ontario Legislature. For nine years, McGuinty led the province through tumultuous times, including the 2008 global economic collapse and recession that cost Ontario over 250,000 jobs. One of

Conference and meeting venue delivers extraordinary value close to Ottawa

 It's event planning season in Eastern Ontario and the largest conference and meeting venue in the region is gearing up to make sure everyone leaves a winner — especially those who make events happen. Situated on the scenic banks of the St. Lawrence River in Cornwall, the NAV CENTRE is

Capital Clips – He Does Design

 Tim Sherstyuk took an Ontario Summer Company grant for a driveway sealing business and turned it into a web design agency. Confused? It goes like this. His driveway business needed an online presence and, while creating it himself, he realized his real gift was generating on-line traffic. Tim describes Elonta

CANADIAN RAILWAYS: Assisting Canada’s Environmental Performance

 Canada’s railways run an average of 1,100 passenger and goods trains every day, often over some of the world's most rugged terrain and in some of the world’s worst weather conditions. Canada’s railways have the best safety record in North America and provide by far the safest means of ground

A ”Less Is More” Approach to Canadian Health Care: Reformulating the Canada Health Transfer

  Change has come to Canada’s health-care funding model. In December 2011, federal Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty announced that the Canada Health Transfer (CHT) – the legislative vehicle through which much of the funding (some $29 billion for the 2012-2013 period alone) for Canada’s provincial and territorial health-care systems is

Capital Clips – Ottawa’s Randy Shaughnessy named Photographic Artist of the Year

 Ottawa-based photographer Randy Shaughnessy has received the award for the Ontario Photographic Artist of the Year at the 2012 Annual Awards Banquet of the Professional Photographers of Canada – Ontario (PPOC-ON). Randy also received an award for Best in Class in the Animal-Wild/Domestic Category. The noted photographer is an accredited

Healthwise: The Benefits of Meditation

 In the past, health was almost always associated with the physical body. Nowadays, more people are discovering the benefits of exercising the mind. The advantages of adding brain-teasers and crosswords to your routine have been lauded over the last few decades because they sharpen the mind and help keep dementia at bay. But

Auditor General Criticizes Outsourcing of Federal Public Service Jobs as Ottawa MPs Pierre Poilievre and John Baird Do Nothing

 By Gary Corbett The findings of Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s Fall 2012 Report, released on October 23, come as no surprise to the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), which represents over five thousand employees impacted by the government’s on–going dismantling of our nation’s public service infrastructure.

Freedom and Darkness in Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton

 Salman Rushdie begins his brilliant new memoir Joseph Anton (Knopf Canada, 2012) by describing a phone call from a BBC journalist in February 1989 in which she asks what it’s like knowing that he’s going to be killed. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, she went on to tell him, had issued a fatwa

Publisher’s Message

 Numerous Canadian public policy academics, public health experts and writers, including André Picard and Jeffrey Simpson at The Globe and Mail, claim that Canada’s health-care system is lagging behind other western countries. As Picard noted in a column last spring in The Globe and Mail entitled Dragging Medicare into the

The Canadian Mentorship Challenge Event: A Highlight of Global Entrepreneurship Week

 Living at One™ and Ethos Networking™ are partnering with Startup Canada, CATAAlliance, and the Canadian Youth Business Foundation to host “Ethos Mentorship 2.0,” a local event for the Canadian Mentorship Challenge, a national initiative to mentor 10,000 enterprising Canadians over the course of Global Entrepreneurship Week (November 12-18, 2012). This free local event will

In Flanders Fields

 The day before he wrote his famous poem, one of John McCrae's closest friends was killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden cross. Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses marking the many graves. Unable to help his friend or

OLM & The Body Shop Celebrate New Look with Prize Giveaway

 The Body Shop has recently unveiled its new store look across the country which puts skincare, make-up, body care and values centre stage. To celebrate, Ottawa Life Magazine is offering you a chance to win a prize pack, from The Body Shop, filled with the new special edition Vineyard Peach

Ted Rusoff: The High Priest of Dubbing

 The expatriate American actor Ted Rusoff was born in Winnipeg in 1939, the son of screenwriter Lou Rusoff. As very few feature films were being produced in Canada at the time, Lou was lured to Hollywood in 1947 by his brother-in-law Samuel Z. Arkoff, a lawyer who would later found

Publisher speaks to Justin Trudeau’s Liberal leadership potential

 Sun TV News interview with OLM Publisher, Dan Donovan, on Liberal Leadership hopeful Justin Trudeau.

Letter from the Publisher

 Twelve years ago when we started the first Annual Top People in the Capital issue, JDS Uniphase CEO Jozef Straus was our number one pick. Remember him? Do you even remember JDS Uniphase – the Halley’s Comet of Ottawa high-tech companies? Other picks in 2000 included then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien

OLM Recipe: Curried Squash and Apple Soup

 Summer is not quite over, especially given the warm weather, but school has already begun and the leaves are slowly starting to turn. As with any season, come culinary traditions and seasonal delights. Fall, being the season that is to prepare us for winter is usually thought of as the

Installation = Music + Time

 In 2011, two local experimental artists met and chronologically depicted 88 individuals to correspond to each key of the piano. Julia Krolik and Owen Fernley (aka the Decomposing Pianos project team) then made a movie which serves as an introduction to the project and showcases the capabilities of an “interactive

Ontario Education Must Learn to Deal with Massive Spending Cuts

 The public education system in Ontario will be hit with $2.6 billion in cuts over the next three years. The education cutbacks will have an enormous impact on students and teachers across the province. Ottawa Life spoke recently with Ken Coran, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. OTTAWA

Part One: Horse Sense & Government Nonsense

 Public-Private Partnerships Are Not Subsidies The Ontario government’s decision to end the Slots at Racetracks Program has a detrimental effect for Ontario’s vibrant horseracing and equine industries. THE COMEDIAN GROUCHO MARX ONCE COMMENTED that: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying

Ottawa, A Very Scary Town: A Conversation with Howard Sonnenburg, Founder of OTTAWA HORROR

 Started in 2008, Ottawa Horror is a blog and portal dedicated to all things horror in our nation's capital. If you are a filmmaker, musician, artist, or fan, this is the place for you. Founder Howard Sonnenburg urges you to recruit minions! Ottawa Life met with Sonnenburg on June 8.

DIY: Metal Frame Collar for your Blouse

 Blouses are one of the staples in anyone’s wardrobe. They can be dressed up with pencil skirts or dressed down with a pair of boyfriend jeans. Blouses are always in style and one can see that the metal collar blouses are the latest trend. Instead of buying a new blouse,

DIY: Hemp Bracelets

 Remember the friendship bracelets back in grade school? While we may not see those colorful bands much anymore, the idea of it is still around. Hemp bracelets are the new friendship bracelet of 2012. They are easy to make and can be customized in so many ways, and who could resist

DVD Review: Final Destination 5 – A One-Way Trip Worth Taking

 How many horror movie franchises have descended into terminal mediocrity by the time they reach their fifth installment? Think of Howling V: The Rebirth (1989), Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985), Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989), Children of