Michael is honouring his mother through his "Cards for Cancer" fundraiser.

I registered as an individual last year for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure. As a fundraiser, I started a campaign, which I call “Cards for Cancer.”

When I was growing up, my mother and I spent every Saturday in the spring and summer going to yard sales and flea markets. We both loved to find great deals, and collected many items. As the years passed, our obsession led to a full basement and garage, and boxes of found treasures piled up in our dining room. The TV show “Hoarders” was not around at this time, but if it had been, we would have been on it. Finally, my mother realized our hobby was out of control, and decided to open a second hand store, where we sold all of our items we collected over the years: books, movies, dishes, sports cards and much, much more. Finally, as more years passed, our house had the space to be a home again.

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997. She was brave and strong, and fought it off. However, the cancer returned and in 2001 she passed away. Since then, I relocated to Edmonton, Alberta. Of all the things I had collected while growing up, the one collection I partly kept going was my postcards. I had managed to keep this collection organized and under control, until recently. Earlier this year, I responded to an online ad, from someone who had boxes of postcards for sale for only $2.00 per box, each containing 300 to 400 postcards, but each box was of the same card. We set up a meeting, and I went to see the postcards.

I arrived at the gentleman’s home, he opened up the garage door, and there were boxes of boxes of postcards. Suddenly, I had this familiar feeling come over me, like the one I had when I was with my mother at a yard sale and I found an amazing deal. I purchased six boxes. When I arrived home and opened the boxes, I realized there were actually 1,000 post cards per box. I was overwhelmed. I immediately contacted the seller of these postcards again, set up another meeting and purchased another 30 boxes. This came to a grand total of 36,000 post cards! They were mostly all duplicates; in total there were roughly 45 different types. As I dragged the boxes into my apartment, I then felt the other feeling I had from my days of “yardsaling” with my mother, that feeling where my hobby was taking over my home. I do trade post cards, but knew I would never trade this many in a lifetime. I remembered my mother and the second hand store. I thought, what better way to honour these memories of my mother, than to turn this obsession into a positive – donations for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

I am participating in the Run for the Cure again this year, and am continuing the “Cards for Cancer” initiative.

If you would like to visit Michael’s “Cards for Cancer” Facebook page, please visit http://www.facebook.com/groups/cardsforcancer/.