Subject: Code of Ontario Odd Fellows Laws, 2025.
Brothers and Sisters, I am attaching the Code of Ontario Odd Fellows Laws to this email. Further explanation will be addressed below.
Our Sovereign Grand Master, Brother Thomas J. Calabrese has also issued a dispensation to us. The explanation for this dispensation immediately follows in what will be “Section #9, of the Grand Secretary’s Report, in our Advance Journal, for the 2026 Annual Session:
Section #9, Dispensation from our Sovereign Grand Master.
The Code updates that we had sent to Sovereign Grand Lodge for approval, last year, were only partially approved. The dues increase, duly passed at the last Annual Session was in dispute due to a typographical error in the Notice of Motion that was received for our Advance Journal.
The matter was brought to my attention by Brother Wayne Geurts, Past Grand Master and I sent the appropriate appeal to the Executive of the Sovereign Grand Lodge. On Monday, November 17, 2025, we received an email dispensation from Brother Thomas J. Calabrese, instructing me to make the appropriate change to the Code of Ontario Odd Fellows Laws, and to make note in the 2026 Advance Journal that the Code Changes had been approved.
This Section of the Grand Secretary’s report will serve to notify everyone that our 2025 Updates to the Code of Ontario Odd Fellows Laws were approved, in their entirety. The appropriate changes to the Code have been made.
As for the Code of Ontario Odd Fellows Laws, You will notice that I have now officially switched the format of the Code to 8 ½ X 11. The old 8 ½ X 5 ½ Codes are now obsolete. I am hereby advising the Lodges, DDGMs, Grand Lodge Officers, PGMs, PELOs, Executives of the Grand Lodge and Rebekah Assembly, etc, that the old codes are now obsolete. You will now receive a new and updated code electronically each year. Any Lodge that wishes to print the code can just buy a binder to place the Code in it and I will send out “update pages” each year from here on out that could be printed and placed in the binder. This will relieve the necessity of sending out Code Updates in paper format and billing the Lodges. This way of doing the code should net a reduction in costs to the Lodges and the Grand Lodge.
Please note, should any legislation be submitted, that the pages numbers in this new format will be the ones to list in the notice of motion or resolution.
Blessings everyone!
john
Grand-Lodge-of-OntarioCode2025LetterSize.pdf