The Canadian five-year census is next month. I worked on the last one -- weird job that. (First, spend a couple of weeks hand-delivering the forms, then the next month we went back to revisit all you unforthcoming types.) Especially given that I live in a rural area. Met some interesting characters, like the 90-year old father of the township reeve, who lives in a funky log cabin way at the back of their hardscrabble farm. He wasn't there when I dropped by--I asked at the reeve's house. "Oh,", they said, "He's probably out on his ATV".

Second part of the job is going back a month later to collar you recalcitrants who didn't send the form in...this is where it gets less fun. (Or more, depending on your personality type I guess.) I got bitten by one dog. Weird scene. Didn't break skin or tear my pants so I didn't make a big deal of it--but the dog's owner was so rattled he called the cops on his own dog! (Obviously a little unclear on proper rural feud-development protocol.)

Every fifth house got the detailed form, with all the strange and personal questions, including about income sources, racial background, etc. There was a formula for the number of questions that had to be answered: it worked out to 90%, so you could leave a couple of spaces blank without having Statistics Canada (me) come back to haunt you. Since there were three different questions that asked basically if you were an aboriginal Canadian, people that hemmed and hawed about answering delicate questions, I just told them if they would admit to not being an Indian and say no to all those ones, they could get away with not filling in the other ones.

All this for 9.50/hr plus gas money...

not this time.

Willie-O