Loans, not charity

I’ve never been comfortable with charitable giving.

It struck me one day when an indigenous guy panhandling on Commercial Drive, who I’d habitually given money to on most walks up the street, chased after me shouting my name when he spotted me with a visiting friend strolling up the other side.

We had just been talking about the complex issues around the vestiges of colonialism and the challenges of reconciliation. He was desperate for my money, explaining that he hadn’t seen me in a few days, that he was particularly hungry.

Caught off guard, I pulled out of my pocket the wad recently taken at the ATM — a few hundred I was taking home. I usually gave him 2 bucks at a time.

So now I had to peel off a $20 for him, having showed him the stack I had on me, and not having any coins this time (I normally carried a roll of $2 coins for walks up the street for him and others).

And then I said, holding it back from his grasping hand a moment, “This should buy me a few days of peace at least, hey?”

I instantly regretted saying it, but I dwelled a long time on where the sentiment behind it came from. There was a relationship between me and him that pivoted around money, money I had and didn’t exactly need — I had just dropped twice the amount on breakfast out — and money he needed and didn’t have. And the transaction, its size, its timing, whether it even happened or not, was all my choice, none of it his.

My flippant comment brought the nature of that relationship home to me: it was a stark and naked dependency, the very thing my friend and I had just earlier that morning decided was the intention behind virtually the entire relationship for Canadian institutions like education, churches, and the state, and their interactions with indigenous communities.

“Giving” is inseparable from “buying” perhaps. For me that day, my 20 bucks was meant to buy “peace” from the guy, it was meant to pay him to stay away from me for awhile. Maybe for an emergency like a Red Cross appeal for donors to help in the aftermath of an earthquake, giving is purely good. But for missions that are ongoing, it becomes a dependency and an unequal exchange.

I later discovered “micro-loan” platforms, and over time, these have become my primary focus for the urge to be helpful in the world.