It has been close to forty years since I first began volunteering as a charitable fund-raiser. It began, as such things generally do, when someone precious to me was stricken with a dreadful disease. Before that, I had the experience of witnessing my father, an inveterate cigarette smoker, slowly succumb to cancer.

But it was when our oldest son in his teen years was diagnosed with juvenile-onset Type One diabetes that I felt a desperate need to do something to advance research that might result in saving our son from the dreadful future potential of blindness, kidney failure, heart and stroke events, neuropathy resulting in limb amputations. The horror stories based in reality of diabetes' leaps into further damage to the human body are mind-numbing in their scope.

That, aside from the need for daily vigilance, to ensure that blood sugar levels, as far as could be managed, be kept within 'normal' acceptable range. That, aside from daily self-administrations of insulin. That, aside from the necessity of the individual diagnosed with diabetes accepting that diagnosis and fully immersing self in the protocols that might enable them to live as close to normal a life as possible.

So that worrying concern on behalf of our son who never shirked his obligation to his future, impelled me to begin door-to-door canvassing at a time when it hadn't been undertaken by the Canadian Diabetes Association in any serious well-managed manner. It also led to my accepting an offer to open a branch office in my city. While learning all I possibly could about diabetes, learning also how to manage an office providing information to those afflicted, arranging for informative meetings and eventually setting up an in-office 'store' for the sale of diabetes-management tools at prices advantageous to the user.

And to learn how best to mount a yearly fundraising campaign, distributing advertising, eliciting participation from among the branch membership, engaging in public relations, overseeing the campaign, publishing an informative branch newsletter and managing the financial accounts of the branch, answerable to the region and the national office. I never did stop my own door-to-door canvassing efforts, though to be absolutely truthful, I hated the annual ritual and never felt comfortable with it.

In succeeding years I lent my experience with door-to-door canvassing to the need to raise funds for charitable organizations focusing on cancer, arthritis, disabilities, kidney disease, heart and stroke, and of course, diabetes. There were times when during the space of a year I would undertake three, even four such canvasses; enterprises that I never learned to love, yet felt determined to take part in, as a public, civic duty. Our neighbours mostly responded extremely well.

This year at the urging of my husband who very well knows how depressed I often feel returning from one of those door-to-door solicitation outings, I refused all requests from those charitable organizations that I have helped support over the years. Although for the most part, those outings could be very pleasant, since in later years I only canvassed the street I now live on, and neighbours tend to be well - neighbourly, I couldn't help but inwardly wince when each of those canvass months came around.

Now I'm free. I have adamantly refused any further canvassing activities on my part. Just about. I still have the Canadian Cancer Society canvass that I've committed to, for yet another year. How could I refuse, I ask myself, when the captain I've answered to for the last dozen years is now in her mid-80s and still going strong?