The surgeon for arteries and veins outside the heart and brain: aneurysms, blocked leg arteries, stroke-prevention neck surgery. Five years of direct-entry residency and some of the longest hours in medicine.
Click through it
Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $419,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $144,000 at the lower end to about $767,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
11 to 15 years after high school, on the usual route.
$74,000 to $165,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a licence or registration before you can work.
Good demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$419,000
Lower end
$144,000
Upper end
$767,000
These are Job Bank (the Government of Canada job site) figures for all surgeons together, a year, from 2023 to 2024. Job Bank pools every surgical specialty in one group, so this is not a vascular surgery figure. Most vascular surgeons bill the provincial health plan per operation and visit, and office, staff and malpractice costs come out of that.
$73,000 to $99,000
A year in Ontario on the scale from July 1, 2025, in postgraduate years 1 to 5 (PGY1 to PGY5), over the 5 years of residency
Set by the 2023 to 2026 agreement between PARO (Professional Association of Residents of Ontario) and Ontario's teaching hospitals, which ran to June 30, 2026. These are its latest published rates. Other provinces have their own agreements. In Ontario you can be on call in the hospital up to 7 nights in every 28.
About $509,000
The median for all surgeons in Alberta, the highest of any province with consistent figures
Manitoba is next at about $458,000. Quebec's median is the lowest published, at about $397,000.
Roughly, all in
$74,000 to $165,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a three year undergraduate degree at a cheaper university, a three year medical school at the lowest domestic tuition, and the exam fees: the MCAT (medical school admission test), the MCCQE (the national medical exam), and the Royal College vascular surgery exam. The high end is a four year degree, a four year medical school at 28,000 a year, and the same exams at their upper fees. Residency is paid work, so the five or more years of training add no tuition, but many also borrow for living costs, and that debt is not counted here. Malpractice coverage costs about 14,600 a year in Ontario once you practise and is partly reimbursed, so it sits outside the cost of qualifying.
Roughly $74,000 to $165,000 before living costs. Many people also finish medical school with large student debt, and residency pay rarely pays it off.
No employer pension
Most vascular surgeons are self-employed and save through a professional corporation.
On-call stipends
Hospitals pay extra for covering nights and weekends, and vascular call is among the heaviest.
Malpractice coverage
Through the CMPA (Canadian Medical Protective Association). Provinces reimburse part of the fee.
Academic salary option
University hospitals often pay a fixed amount instead of per-case billing, with more research and teaching.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Every doctor's road, then a surgical residency you can enter straight from medical school.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Top marks in biology, chemistry, math and English. You need a very high average for a science undergrad.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Any major works. Keep a GPA (grade point average) above 3.8, volunteer, do research. Write the MCAT (medical school admission test).
Medical school, the MD (doctor of medicine)
3 to 4 years
Very competitive: most applicants are turned down. Classes, then clinical rotations. Vascular electives and reference letters decide the match.
Vascular surgery residency
5 years, or 5 plus 2
Direct entry from medical school through CaRMS (the residency matching service). The older route still exists too: a full residency in general, cardiac or thoracic surgery, then 2 more years of vascular surgery. Open operations, wire-and-stent repairs through the groin, ultrasound and imaging.
Royal College exam and licence
End of residency
Pass the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada exam to become FRCSC (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada). Register with your provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons. Some add a fellowship in complex aortic work.
Biology and chemistry
Required for nearly every pre-med path.
Physics
Blood flow is fluid dynamics. Tested on the MCAT (medical school admission test) too.
Calculus and functions
English
You will write, present and explain for the rest of your career.
You need a licence from your provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons to practise, and Royal College certification in vascular surgery to work as one. Hospitals will not grant operating privileges without both. The credential is national, so moving provinces is paperwork and fees.
In Quebec you apply to medical school straight from CEGEP (public college), with no bachelor's degree first.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
With Secondary V math (Technical and Scientific, or Science option), chemistry and physics. These are the entry courses for the CEGEP (public college) science program.
Science DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
A 2 year CEGEP (public college) program (200.B1), offered in English at Dawson and the other English colleges. Take the biology and chemistry courses medical schools ask for.
Medical school, straight from CEGEP
4 to 5 years
No bachelor's degree needed. McGill and Montréal start with a 1 year preparatory year, Laval and Sherbrooke do not. You need a top R-score (the CEGEP ranking score), the Casper test and interviews.
Vascular surgery residency
5 years
Matched through CaRMS (the residency matching service), straight from medical school. 5 years at McGill and Montréal. At McGill that is 2 years of surgical foundations, then 3 of vascular surgery.
Royal College exam and CMQ (Collège des médecins du Québec) permit
End of residency
Pass the Royal College exams. The CMQ, the Quebec college of physicians, then issues your permit and specialist certificate once you show French. A Quebec high school diploma counts.
Get a hospital position
Before you start
Every specialist working in a Quebec hospital must hold a spot in its PEM (plan d'effectifs médicaux, the medical staffing plan). The health ministry approves how many each hospital gets.
Montréal and Laval set a minimum R-score (the CEGEP ranking score) of 33 for CEGEP applicants in 2026. McGill's Med-P year is only for recent CEGEP graduates.
McGill and Montréal also offer a 2 year route for surgeons who have already finished general, cardiac or thoracic surgery. Montréal trains at the CHUM (its university hospital), Maisonneuve-Rosemont, Sacré-Cœur, the Cité de la Santé in Laval and the Trois-Rivières hospital, and says good spoken and written French is essential. McGill's sites include the Jewish General and the Royal Victoria.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Endovascular repair
Fixing aneurysms and blockages from inside the vessel with wires, balloons and stents, guided by X-ray. Now most of the workload.
Complex aortic surgery
Big open operations on the body's main artery. Fewer surgeons do them every year.
Limb salvage
Bypasses and wound care to keep diabetic patients from losing a foot or a leg.
Vein clinic work
Varicose veins, often private-pay. Lighter hours, regular schedule.
Surgery electives and research in med school
The match is decided by letters from surgeons who watched you work.
Stamina
Sports, shift work, anything that proves you can function tired. Vascular call is relentless.
Fine hand skills
Sewing vessels a few millimetres wide, sometimes under magnification.
French
Opens Quebec, Ottawa and New Brunswick programs and jobs.
A ruptured aneurysm, a leg with no pulse, a stab wound to a major artery: these cannot wait for morning. Vascular surgeons at big hospitals take call for their whole career, and a call night can mean a long operation starting at midnight. Ask yourself early whether that is a life you want.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
7 a.m. rounds. First case: an aneurysm repair through two small groin punctures, watching the stent open on the X-ray screen. Then a leg bypass, several hours of stitching an artery a few millimetres wide. On clinic days, 20 patients with leg pain when they walk, foot wounds that will not heal, or a narrowed neck artery that could cause a stroke. On call, you might open a ruptured aneurysm at midnight with the patient's life measured in minutes.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
An aneurysm fixed with a stent threaded up from the groin means 1 to 3 days in hospital and 2 to 4 weeks to recover. Open surgery on the abdomen means 5 to 7 days in hospital and 1 to 3 months to recover.
An aortic aneurysm is a bulge in the body's main artery that can burst. The Canadian Society for Vascular Surgery says all men aged 65 to 80 should have one ultrasound to check. Surgeons usually discuss repair once it reaches 5 to 5.5 cm.
About 25% of people with diabetes develop a foot wound in their lifetime. When one will not heal, vascular surgeons open blocked arteries with a bypass or a balloon to get blood to the foot and save it.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Surgeons first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
Tell us about this page. A person reads every message.
No email app on this device? Use Gmail instead: report a mistake in Gmail or say what you like in Gmail.