Something you might find unusual happened to me a while back when I canvassed for the Toronto Star. Each evening from around 6pm to 9pm, Monday to Friday, I would knock on the doors of homes and apartments all across Toronto, from southwest Etobicoke to northeast Scarborough.

No Toronto neighbourhood was safe from me and my persistent canvassing. On weekends I would take my sales pitch outside Toronto, to cities like Guelph and Kitchener where I would spend entire Saturdays plying my trade. Aside from my less-than-slick sales pitch—“Hi ma’am, my name is Mark and I’m in a contest with some other boys trying to win a fantastic ten-speed bike and you could really help me out by taking the Toronto Star for a very short period of eight weeks”—what’s so unusual about that, you ask?

I was just eleven years old.

Can you imagine allowing your sixth-grader to walk alone on dark streets in today’s Toronto? (Much of my canvassing “stint” was in the cold too, lasting from October 1975 to June 1976.) I think we know the answer to that one.

Which begs the follow-up question: Were my parents simply nuts? Hardly. My dad was an X-ray technician for Mass Surveys at 880 Bay Street, and my mom a nurse at The Hospital for Sick Children (she graduated there in 1954—back then nurses trained in hospitals and not community colleges like today), so they were certainly responsible folks. But what they felt was infinitely safe in Toronto. This of course is so unusual and foreign to us now when we think of Toronto.

It sure would be nice to feel that way again.

I couldn’t agree more. So make no mistake, despite my common-sense Platform to Get Toronto Moving both physically and economically—a part of that to dramatically improve safety on the TTC—the sense of urgency to return Toronto to a place where everyone feels safe and secure is not lost on me.

Can we ever get Toronto back to that “safe place” again?

Perhaps not—it’s a vastly different world now, after all—but I’m forever the optimist and I’m confident we can because I’ve experienced that feeling of safety in Toronto, I’ve actually lived it, and I know how wonderful it was back then to be able to walk the streets without an ounce of fear or concern. Community safety shouldn’t be a luxury—it is your right!—and as Mayor I will be fully committed to getting us back to that “safe place” with people working, and families living, playing and growing in an environment where Toronto is safe for everyone.

Now, apparently “canvassing” isn’t exclusive to selling newspaper subscriptions—I’m told it’s just as important when it comes to political campaigns and winning votes. I guess that means it’s time to put on that “canvassing” hat again and get out there, which is great because I love meeting and getting to know people. It’s also something I think I’m pretty good at because it turns out my less-than-slick sales pitch was better than I thought: I won that ten-speed bike!