Wheelchair use and non-dog service animal in Toronto

[alicorn24]

I'm planning to write two characters who live in Toronto and use wheelchairs (they can walk, but it's safer if they don't try). One of them also has a (sapient-but-pretending-not-to-be-to-regular-people, magical, well-behaved and responsive to his person's verbal instructions) cat, who prefers to accompany her when she's out and about. What

Comments

[orange_fell]

MOD NOTE: I approved this because you are mostly seeking personal experiences, but please add search terms in order to comply with the rules.

Edit: Thanks!

[thekumquat]

Look up Dave Hingsburger's blog. He educates on disability issues and is a wheelchair user lliving in Toronto, mentioning loads of disability issues over the years. A very educational read.

[xianghua]

Seconding Dave's blog- he's a great resource AND an amazing guy.

REALLY foggy recollection on Canadian service animal laws is that here is a national law that guarantees the right to use one for a disabled person but doesn't grant access automatically, and that it's governed past that on a provincial basis for public access.

[lilacsigil]

My wheelchair-using Canadian friend (used manual chairs as a kid, now uses a power chair) said that she was always given wheelchairs of reasonable quality and suited to her needs...but there was often quite a long wait between request and delivery. This was a problem when she was growing and also after surgeries. She couldn't get two without paying for the extra one so that when one was being repaired she still had one to use.

[alicorn24]

Thanks - a couple clarifying questions about the cat

[rj_anderson]

I'm pretty sure the cat would be an issue in most places, since dogs are generally recognized as service animals but cats are not (for the perfectly sensible reason that they're vastly harder to train). So they'd have to keep proving themselves by putting the cat through its paces for any skeptical shop owner or employee who told them "pets aren't allowed in here!" Some kind of official looking service vest would certainly help, though

[alicorn24]

Yeah, I'm definitely imagining her rolling her eyes and instructing her familiar to perform a variety of tricks ranging from "meow" through "go get me a package of mochi out of the freezer aisle, the pistachio kind" all the way to "get my phone out of my purse and call my mom" on demand but she'd rather skip it as often as possible.