Pet Friendly Student Residences in Canada

How pet friendly is your student residence?

If you’re an animal lover, you may be frustrated by the lack of pet-friendly student residences in Canada. Keep in mind; while a lot of residence administrators may share your love of pets, they have to be respectful of students with allergies or other concerns. If pets are a deal-breaker for you, you may have to find off-campus housing.

Unfortunately, there is no major database or list of pet-friendly schools. In fact, if you’re trying to google it, you’ll find plenty of websites for pet-friendly hotels and resorts, but no colleges or universities.

To find out who allows pets and what they allow, research sadly needs to be done on a school-by-school basis. Most residences and dorms have some sort of website, so start your search there.

Here’s a sampling of some of Canada’s schools and their policy on pets:

University of Western Ontario– No pets allowed, “Including fish turtles, reptiles, birds and all other types of animals.”

University of British Columbia – UBC does allow for some pets. They allow, “Fish in an aquarium, caged pet birds, and caged gerbils may be kept in the interior of the Residential Premises provided always that they are kept in such a manner so as not to cause damage to the Residential Premises or create a nuisance to other tenants or to the Landlord’s staff or operations.

Seneca College– Seneca has a black and white, “No pets of any kind are permitted in Residence” policy.

University of Alberta – East Campus Village, Newton Place, HUB, Graduate Residence and Michener Park residences do permit the following pets:

• Fish in a maximum 10 gallon aquarium
• A maximum of 2 birds per unit, each no more than twenty centimeters in length.

Do you know your school’s pet friendly policy? Let us know in the comments.