This is the best summary I could come up with:

Thomas Leblanc spent 35 years fighting wildfires in Montana, Alberta, British Columbia and his home province of Ontario, but when he developed a cancer linked to firefighting, he was repeatedly denied workplace coverage.

In 2009, Leblanc found a lump in his neck and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, one of more than a dozen cancers considered a presumptive work-related illness in most parts of Canada for structural firefighters.

Leblanc had no idea she would become entrenched in a nearly decade-long battle to get the WSIB to recognize that her late husband’s cancer was caused by three decades of wildfire exposure.

Her husband’s WSIB documents, which fill three thick binders, lay out how he was often exposed to burning treated lumber, such as railway ties, which are associated with the release of harmful chemicals.

“Forest firefighters have a pair of boots, a hard hat and coveralls made from Nomex,” she said, referring to a fibre that’s resistant to flames and high temperatures.

In Saskatchewan, workplace injuries are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, but if a wildland firefighter develops cancer, presumptive coverage does not apply.

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