Okay alright fine - with encouragement from other instance admins, I'll open up a PayPal link where Canadian Mastodauts can donate to the server costs.
Funds will be deposited to an account specifically for mstdn.ca.
Currently, the instance costs:
Compute nodes: $120/mo
Postgres server: $60/mo
Redis server: $15/mo
Media CDN: $10/mo and increasing
Mailgun: $35/mo
Cloudflare: $20/mo
Total: USD$260/mo (as of Nov 17)
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=TUYC2QUKR2HQS