Canvassing, Again

Not all that long since I was out canvassing this street, back in February for the Heart & Stroke Foundation. I've had the canvass kit from the Canadian Cancer Society nagging at me for weeks, now. I've finally succumbed, to the compelling need to fulfil my obligations, and off I toddled down the street I live on, to knock once again on my neighbours' doors.

I've been doing this for so long, for so many different charitable organizations, over the course of many years that I've become acutely knowledgeable about the welcome, or lack of, I'll receive at each and every house. And before the 20 years' residence on this street there was a similar ritual enacted year after year where our previous home was located.

Some of those houses on this street I now avoid entirely, well aware of the hostile greeting my presence will evoke. Thesr are people I don't personally know, the kind of people who prefer a distance between themselves and their neighbours, who take affront at the nerve some people have, to impose themselves upon others who wish nothing whatever to do with them, or with the greater needs of the society they inhabit.

There is nothing to be gained by confronting them with my canvass kit and the invitation to support my mission. Logically enough that part of the street furthest to where our own house is located is where I receive the least warm welcomes. Even though at some houses at the very end of the street I'm warmly greeted and handsomely remunerated on behalf of the charity I'm temporarily representing.

Still, on occasion, I do succumb to a tad of recklessness and knock at those singular doors, offering once again the opportunity to these recalcitrant house-holders to fulfil their own obligations. Rarely does this result in a welcome and a concomitant cheerfully-donated sum to any charity.

Happily, there are an equal number of residents on the street comfortable with the prospect of welcoming me, or other door-to-door canvassers back, year after year.
Those who recognize that we all have something to add to society's need to bring us into a common social pact, be it to provide practical and educational assistance to people living with blindness, crippling arthritis, the fear of heart attacks, or dread cancer.

Assistance to those who require the larger society's largess in assisting with food, housing and homelessness another great issue to be confronted and mutually acknowledged.

Donations range from the modest to the generous, and all are equally appreciated. Responses run the gamut from sincere thanks to the canvasser for donating time, energy and dedication to helping close the gap between the enablers and the needy, and those who genuinely welcome another opportunity, whatever the impetus, to visit, chat and exchange neighbourhood news.

Needless to say, the neighbourhood pets will not be ignored; their need too, to be acknowledged, greeted and fussed with is paramount to the process.

Best of all, my conscience is temporarily relieved of the burden of procrastination, knowing that at last I've made a start, begun the process, which another few determined jaunts on my street will soon conclude in a mission completed.