On Aug 28th I was injured at work. I had been rushing after cutting my finger and slipped resulting in me hitting my hip and shoulder really hard. After being in intense pain, the boss made me wait over an hour before he'd let me leave to go to emerge. I got misdiagnosed in emerge since there was no visible breaks, they didn't do anything. I ended up back in emerge a few days later as the pain got worse. They gave me a letter to get physiotherapy and made me fill out wsib forms (I had no idea what wsib was at the time). After a few days the wsib called me and asked a bunch of questions then told me someone would review my case and pay for my physio as well as loss of earnings. I started physio and the doctor pointed out several things wrong that that would ultimately effect the rest of my body if not addressed. We did some intense sessions and things started to feel a bit better, then wouldn't. Kind of back and forth between unbearable pain then normalcy. After about 2 months the wsib finally paid me, way less than I would have made but it was a relief at the time as I was behind on everything. This is when problems started to arise.

My next pay was overdue already and when I called to speak to the case manager, he said go back to work. Me still in pain questioned how I could do that when I can barely even walk on flat ground let alone anything else. He claimed it was within my abilities. After several phone calls I found they were basing my abilities on the first emerge visit. Not the second or the physiotherapy results. After a couple weeks they finally acknowledged the physio recommendations but still refused to pay me. They made a return to work a month before I was supposed to be healed but the employer texted me at 11 at night when I'm asleep by 9 each night. I said that is unreasonable to my employer and wsib. The next day I attempted to go to the job site but couldn't walk far and was expected to walk 2.4km from the closest bus stop, with most if that being uphill. I called the office to see if someone would pick me up and they refused and said figure it out on my own. So I went home and called wsib to tell them.

The case manager has a hardon for making me stressed clearly as he cut me off wsib for not returning to work which meant no more pay or physiotherapy. I bickered with him countless times, appealed and still couldn't get any results. Even going to his manager who agreed with my side, I'm still getting no where. My problems with my shoulder and hip have evolved and spread to my knees, back and neck causing flare ups of intense pain and I have ti take more ibuprofen and Tylenol that I would for a toothache. I've tried to explain this, I even geomapped the commute to work to show I can't get there and I still got denied the appeal and now am waiting for a letter with a different form thar goes above the case manager and his boss. But it's been almost 3 months and I'm waking up in the middle fo the night with shocking pains in my shoulder, or ill go to go up my stairs and instantly collapse due to the pain in my hip.

At this point I'm scared that this is permanent and going to get worse like the doctor said. I'm confused and mentally struggling with this new reality I'm stuck with. I have dreams and goals and now I can't even fathom doing 10% of them in this condition. I don't know what to do, I recently went back to college to keep me occupied while I recover and I have no income support and osap barely gives me any extra for personal use. Any advice would be great.

Hey y’all,

I have jury duty on monday but im feeling super unwell. Not sure if there is any way to get out if this ? Im in London Ontario.

I'm looking to take unpaid leave of absence to travel back home and take care of some family issues. I was wondering what the best way to take 3 months off without needing too much/any documentation?

Hi, I'm currently a midwestern American, Great Lakes area resident considering becoming an expat due to current events and a fear for my safety. My state is very left-leaning but only due to its major city. I'm not planning to bail immediately, but I am saving up and preparing for the worst. I'm looking into Ontario because it's very close to my home of 4 years now and I'm a little scared to flee too far. Is Ontario a safe space for trans expats? If so what areas?

About what I'm looking for:
Both me and my partner are trans and on hormones, we need a progressive area, where we can obtain those hormones reliably.
I am disabled, I'm epileptic and seizure-free but would hope for somewhere walkable in case push comes to shove and I can't drive anymore.
I work in dog grooming, and she's planning to go into plumbing. A good tech school close by might be nice, and maybe somewhere not exorbitantly expensive.

What I'd like if possible:
Being close to Lake Erie would be nice because it's closer to where I'm from.
I'm mainly English-speaking, but I'm unsure how much of Ontario is primarily French-speaking, if at all. I'd be fine learning French; I just don't know any right now, and I don't want to be a fish out of water if we have to jump ship suddenly.

Things I don't mind:
I have lived in rural, urban, and suburban areas, mostly all rentals, I don't mind any of the three.
I don't mind living somewhere drastically different from the life I'm used to, a culture shock might be good for me considering the nightmare my home country is becoming.

Are there any areas of Ontario that fit what I'm looking for or should I look elsewhere? Be honest with me lol!

EDIT: I've noticed a few rude/vague comments, please don't respond if you have nothing helpful to say, actual advice only, thank you!

Got the news from my supervisor (I’m on leave) that they’re changing the employment services model starting next year. I had no idea, even though I went to an entire seminar about it back in February. Now that I’m returning, I’m hearing they can’t draft a new contract for me yet because essentially all of the employment services, including those for youth (my department), will be discontinued due to SSM. I did my own research and learned that EO service providers and other private/public sector companies are essentially taking over caseloads from OW/ODSP to “help” people get off it, which means more bureaucracy and higher caseloads.

For those who’ve already made the switch, has anyone seen a new contract with a salary increase? How are you handling the switch? My center will be transitioning in March 2025.

Hello all, I would like to thank everyone who gave their experiences and inputs regarding our issue with a hot water tank from our previous post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/1gjmmz5/comment/lvmow3e/

TL;DR at bottom.

We finally received a reply today and unfortunately it is not good news. There were some new questions that arose when reading their reply, but I do not think we can do anything about it at this point. This was their reply:

The case has also been reviewed by Senior Leader at [Service Provider Company] and internally within The Home Depot.   

• Upgrades of the vent installation are outside of scope of a removal/replacement of an exiting hot water tank.
• The request initiated was for removal/replacement of an existing hot water tank
• There should be no alternations needed to install the same size hot water tank, providing it is the same type.  i.e. 40 or 50 gallon hot water tank.  Moving from a 40 or 50 hot water there would be changes required to plumbing.  An upgrade from a 40 to 50 hot water tank to a vented hot water tank would have required an electrical if an outlet was out of reach. Moving from Electrical to Gas and vise versa would also have required plumbing/electrical alterations.
• All our HVAC quotes require a site visit for the most part. A  Hot Water Tank quote does not require a site visit.  The quote is provided on line.  The person that provided the quote made the decision of what the quote would be to remove/reinstall your tank based on the photos provided.   Due diligence was performed.  As hot water tanks are not quoted on site, there are some times unforeseen issues that are found at the time of install. 
  • The technician installed the tank within code
  • A pre-existing condition was note at the time of install and the install was complete
• The expectation is that there is someone over the Age of 18 at home at time of install who can discuss these issues with the installer.  
• The contract was fulfilled accordingly. 

[Service Provider Company] will assign the contract for Hot Water tank replacements to a technician.  Contracts where alterations are needed to electrical or plumbing. [Service Provider Company] will assign a licensed certified electrician and plumber if requirement was needed.   [Service Provider Company] does also install HVAC products. For this type of installation a certified plumber, electrician with HVAC certification are assigned.  TSSA strict guidelines are expected to be followed.  All HVAC  technician's, plumbers, electricians are fully vetted, have to provide their credentials upon request and must be fully insured.  This was a Hot Water Install and not a an HVAC install.  [Service Provider Company] does offer cleaning services on other products.  These services are not related to your contract with Home Depot and [Service Provider Company].  The technician did provide you with information that there was a chimney issue he noted and did provide the information. He is obligated to provide you with the information, so that you can remedy the situation and avoid such issues as a lock out tag out.    Given the reasons listed the Home Depot respectively declines your request to replace the chimney liner and/or any associated costs.  As noted above this is out side of the scope of the install. Kindly note that this is a our firm and final position.  We understand that you may not be satisfied with our position. At this time I wish to inform you that this case will be closed as we feel we have dealt with the matter accordingly.  If you wish to re-open the case, simply reply and provide the lock out tag our repot provided to you by the city.  We will review the report you provide, should the lock out tag out state that the Hot Water Tank is not installed within code we will address the matter accordingly. We would connect with Steam Dry once we receive the report and request a quote to replace the chimney liner and the scope of work.   

---------------------------------

There should be no alternations needed to install the same size hot water tank, providing it is the same type.  i.e. 40 or 50 gallon hot water tank.  Moving from a 40 or 50 hot water there would be changes required to plumbing. 

I am a bit confused about this part, if there were not alternation needed, then why did the guy red tag the vent and say it needs to be updated? Our old tank was 40 and new is still 40.
Do they mean something different that is related to the water tank?

A  Hot Water Tank quote does not require a site visit.  The quote is provided on line.  The person that provided the quote made the decision of what the quote would be to remove/reinstall your tank based on the photos provided.

Based on everyone's response in the previous post, someone is suppose to be sent to check the full scope of the project and consult you about everything. I also went to search Home Depot's website after my initial post and saw this:

https://preview.redd.it/amd2ew7tbrzd1.png?width=670&format=png&auto=webp&s=2ef2132779c388ee342051f8bbe98ea79ed09070

But again, this did not happen and we were not told of anything of the vent needed to be upgraded before the installation and the new codes.

A pre-existing condition was note at the time of install and the install was complete

So this is making me a bit doubt myself a bit (because I know nothing of this field), whenever Enbridge came to check the gas meter and even our old water tank, no one said anything about the vent. And based on everyone's response, the previous codes should have been grandfathered.

[Service Provider Company] will assign the contract for Hot Water tank replacements to a technician.  Contracts where alterations are needed to electrical or plumbing. [Service Provider Company] will assign a licensed certified electrician and plumber if requirement was needed.   [Service Provider Company] does also install HVAC products. For this type of installation a certified plumber, electrician with HVAC certification are assigned.  TSSA strict guidelines are expected to be followed.  All HVAC  technician's, plumbers, electricians are fully vetted, have to provide their credentials upon request and must be fully insured.  This was a Hot Water Install and not a an HVAC install. 

They say this but when we kept asking them to replace the vent, their response was "we do not do vents, you need to find a chimney company, we only install the hot water tank". And every Home Depot representative keep telling us it is HVAC.
So I am a bit confused at this part, is chimney a part of HVAC? They say they have certified HVACs but they don't do vents? I have a voice message of them stating "we do not do vents, you need to find a chimney company". Is a chimney company different from HVAC? We do not have a fireplace, if this info is relevant.

The technician did provide you with information that there was a chimney issue he noted and did provide the information. He is obligated to provide you with the information, so that you can remedy the situation and avoid such issues as a lock out tag out. 

They are not acknowledging the problem of the fact that they informed us after the installation.
I am guessing a lock out tag is an A tag where they shut off your gas immediately, and not the B tag that gives 45 - 90 days?

So I am guessing they are saying that it was our old water tank vents that were not up to code and they just "found" it when doing the install. And because we cannot prove or know for sure if the old one was up to code, we have no say.
But they are saying that their job is only the water tank only and anything else is not their job.

I cannot reply to the email because of course at the end they said they close the case. But I just wanted to warn anyone in the future that if you plan to change your water heater soon or in the future, DO NOT USE HOME DEPOT. Call an actual professional because they will ACTUALLY come and check the full scope of the project and be transparent about it BEFORE THE INSTALLATION. As someone who knows nothing about this, this is a real headache....

I guess our next steps will be to call Enbridge to see if they actually did install it correctly or not and make sure the tag really is flagging something, as some technicians in the previous post says the code just links to a table of types of vents and nothing specific.

But again, Thank You everyone for their input last time. From now on we will never use Home Depot for their services and I hope our experience will inform and convince others too, so they don't have what happened to us, happen to them. Hopefully saving them the time and money.
But if they do choose to use them, then I wish them good luck and hope that what happened to us, does not happen to them.

Edited to add TL;DR:

Used Home Depot's services to install a water heater. They installed it without sending a consultant or informing us of new TSSA codes regarding gas vent beforehand and immediately red tags it after installing. Made a complaint. They declined because they say "we just happen to find a violation while installing it" and we only install the water tank.

Don't use Home Depot services for water tank installation, call an actual professional who will send an actual technician who will look at the full setup first and tell you all the details up front and costs before the work.

Hi all. I am conflicted. I am 26 years old and considering pursuing my PhD after a year of working in private consulting. I have my Master's, but find the work I do currently very repetitive, stressful, and boring. The abysmal pay (63k) does not help. I don't see myself making significantly more in the next few years, and I would rather work in research anyway (I'm in the field of geosciences). The project is fully funded, but obviously not comparable to what I make post-tax currently in Ontario, without the aid of some scholarships (which I am eligible for). I've been wildly conflicted, so any input, thoughts, opinions are appreciated ❤️

There's going to be some changes to r/Ontario. For reasons listed below, we're going to be changing what kinds of posts are allowed in this community. But you should read this entire post anyways.

In the past, we have allowed pretty much any type of post as long as it has related to Ontario in some way. This worked in the past when our community was smaller, and actually was one of the intentional goals of this community - to be a place that facilitates anything about Ontario on Reddit.

In early 2019 we had about 50,000 subscribers. Back then, you were pretty limited with regards to location based communities having active posters, or active moderators. To give some context at how under-developed r/Ontario was, back in early 2019, r/Ottawa had slightly more community members. Smaller cities having active communities didn't happen, maybe a couple of university towns, but that's it.

When I joined the team here, one of my immediate goals was to ensure that this community could fill in that gap, where people from those other places in Ontario could go to discuss what they wanted. So therefore we allowed pretty much every niche topic as long as it was related to something in Ontario. From restaurant recommendations in a small city, to a specific question about OSAP. We allowed it all.

Since the pandemic we've grown by 900%, and we will reach 1 million members sometime next year. The Ontario reddit sphere is now healthier than ever. More smaller cities are becoming active, more people are volunteering as moderators to support the posting efforts in those. Not only just location based communities in the province of Ontario. But more communities not about specific places in Ontario are becoming more active as well.

Besides the endless amount of NSFW communities for people from Ontario, there's a healthy amount of growth and activity in communities for hobbies, activities, and personal issues.

With the growth of those other issue and city-specific communities, it raises the question, does r/Ontario need to continue to facilitate "anything about Ontario on Reddit" Especially when similar communities exist which may be better suited to deal with those posts?

At the same time, we're seeing posts about federal politics interfere in r/Ontario. We're going to be cracking down on this harder. Posts about federal political party leaders will not be allowed moving forward unless they are directly related to the province of Ontario. Posts about federal politics will not be allowed either due to the other numerous communities which are dedicated to that topic.

What we're not doing:

• We're not prohibiting 'Discussion' or 'Question' posts
• We're not removing 'Picture' or 'Video' Posting options.
• We're not making this community 'Article' only or similar
• We're not removing posts because they are about a specific city in Ontario
• We're not removing news about cities, big or small

What we are doing:

• We are being more strict about repetitive questions
• We are directing some question or recommendation posts about a specific place if an active city or town subreddit exists and allows those kinds of questions.
• We are still allowing articles about specific places in Ontario
• We are prohibiting posts that are solely about federal politics and are not related to r/Ontario besides the fact that Ontatio is in Canada.

Example 1: We're not removing all posts about GO Transit because r/GOTransit exists. Instead, we might remove a post asking about an issue with a train schedule and direct them to r/GOTransit instead.

Example 2: We're not removing all posts about Sudbury because r/Sudbury exists. Instead, we might remove a post asking about a recommendation for a hotel in Sudbury that has an indoor pool. We would then recommend posting to r/Sudbury instead.

Example 3: We're not removing every post that mentions ODSP Instead, we might remove a post asking a specific question about ODSP which may better be suited for r/ODSP

Federal politics and their relation to this community exists on a spectrum. On one side, you have a post about Nova Scotia, something completely unrelated to Ontario. And on the other side of the spectrum you have a post about a federal policy which will remove money from many Ontario municipalities, something which is completely related to Ontario. Some examples:

1. Unrelated to Ontario:

Trudeau comments on the strange never before seen glowing fish found at the Bay of Fundy

2. Slightly relaxed to Ontario:

Pierre Poilievre speculated glowing fish could be found in other waterways

3. Related to Ontario:

Trudeau comments on glowing fish found in Lake Ontario

4. Very related to Ontario

Strange glowing fish grows legs and has attacked people in Toronto

On that scale, 1&2 would not be related to Ontario and would be removed. 3&4 would be allowed with no issue as they are directly related to Ontario.

I can't write out every example in this post due to the infinite nature of post topics in this community. But if you ask, we can attempt to answer that question.

One other thing:

We made an announcement post a while ago talking about how content like racism was going to be dealt with in this community. We've been using that framework to moderate and we've seen success with it to combat the kind of low quality content that's becoming more common online.

So moving forward that policy is going to be implemented into our rules. With severe punishments for racist content, and also for new accounts that post that kind of content.

Removing those types of racist content aligns with Reddit's content policy, as we often find content which was previously removed by us, being deleted by the Reddit admins. The unfortunate reality of Reddit in its current form still does not allow the moderators to use effective tools to moderate posts which have a substantial amount of comments, hence the need for locking posts.

The best way to avoid posts being locked are for you, the users, to be reporting rule breaking content. That can range from reporting a single comment, to reporting many of a user's comments, to sending us a modmail making us aware of a troll or brigade. All are appreciated, we see it all.

The absolute vast majority of people who participate and view this community do not hold the type of racist views that are sometimes posted here. Reporting that type of content is you fighting back against an effort to make those types of racist views mainstream.

You can read the wording of our detailed rules page, but some phrases might be changed slightly to make things more clear over the next few weeks, based on feedback from this post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/wiki/rules

For moderators of other communities related to Ontario

If you are a moderator of another Ontario related community, you are always welcome to reach out to us if you have any questions or need help with a specific aspect of your community.

Reddit now has resources to help you grow your community. They have resources to help you figure out what rules need to be implemented, or to help you grow your team. All of which you may not be aware of if you're just starting out.

Communication between related subreddits is important and often both sides can benefit from knowledge of what the others are dealing with. They can share tips or advice on how to deal with specific issues. You can use the subreddit messaging feature to message us directly from your modmail portal.

If you have a baby or toddler I highly recommend you talk to your doctor about getting the RSV antibody Beyfortus. With RSV season coming up your baby could be hit bad and require hospitalization. This is a new antiviral that through clinical trials has been shown to be effective in decreasing severity of RSV in infants. It is covered through OHIP.

Even pregnant women 32-36 weeks can get a RSV vaccine (a different one) through their MD/OBGYB/Midwife and it also has been shown to have RSV antibodies in infants 6 months post injection.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/respiratory-syncytial-virus

The study regarding the vaccine: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38701823/

Hi! I'm trying to locate the Ontario divorce certificate of my mother. I need the certificate for a legal application but I'm having trouble locating the document. From my understanding, the only place that holds copies is the Ontario courthouse where the divorce was filed in and only those in the divorce can request a search online.

My mother's divorce occured during the decade before I was born and she passed away when I was a child. During the time period (1990-2000), she lived in Toronto. Does anyone know if there's a way to locate divorce records without having to travel to each courthouse in person? So far, I think they're 8 provincial course within the city and I have no idea which one she went to.