If the rain holds off this evening, I'll have the opportunity to go out to continue for a third time completing the door-to-door canvass I committed myself to, for the Canadian Cancer Society. April is the month for the Cancer Society to appeal to the public for financial donations, and the month is almost over. I've a few days left to cram some time for the canvass into. My attitude is cringe-worthy for having left it for so long, but you know how it is, busy doing all manner of things, including spring house cleaning, tidying up the mess that winter has left in the gardens. There's always a reason. Oh, and the rotten weather that nature has treated us to, of late.

In any event, our good neighbours respond as they always have, although I'm convinced the time for this type of fund-raising has seen its day. Far better for people to donate to charitable causes of their choice through the Internet. It's what I do, for the most part, myself. It's convenient and you can zero in on the causes that interest you, that you feel compelled to donate to.

The door-to-door canvass represents a kind of moral blackmail; one neighbour confronting another and the social pressure is there to accede to a neighbour's request for support for a specific charity. Or, in my case, a number of charities since up until this year I have been chronically incapable of expressing a definite "no" to all such request, and I'm convinced my neighbours got good and tired of seeing my hopeful face in their doorway representing one cause after another.

Still, it does have the advantage of creating an opportunity for people to become acquainted. A few young families have moved onto the street with houses changing hands. One door I knocked on last Thursday brought me face to face with a large black Labrador Retriever I had no idea actually lived there. Of course there was a human presence as well a harried looking young mother clasping a chubby baby to her chest, with the sounds of other children in the background. She would doubtless be very pleasant under other circumstances.

And another, on Saturday, down the other end of the street, a young man, father of three young children, the youngest in fact a year old, working in his garden, cutting back the dry stalks of perennials. An avid gardener, he told me, and so I knew I'd found someone with interests common to my own. We spoke for quite a long time about gardening, about the ravine that his house backs on, about his interests in nature and mine as well. He was half my age, but his interests mirrored in part my very own.

What's more, he decided on a most generous donation to the Canadian Cancer Society.