View from the Cheap Seats is kind of an extension of the newsroom. Whenever our three regular reporters, Calvin Daniels, Thom Barker and Randy Brenzen are in the building together, it is frequently a site of heated debate. This week: How do you feel about the end of door to door mail service?
Not a ballot issue
To hear proponents of door-to-door delivery talk about it, you would think it was a provision of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In fact, it is little more than a sacred calf. Even before the conversions started last year, only about 32 per cent of Canada’s 15.7 million postal addresses received door-to-door service.
I live in a newer neighbourhood, before that I lived in an apartment building and before that a rural area where I had to drive into the nearest town to get my mail. Our community box is a big upgrade from that.
Door to door mail service has always been a privilege of the older areas of urban centres and are really the only places where the issue has any traction.
And even there, as evidenced by the many people I have talked to in Yorkton who are currently being converted, there is very little uproar. The fact is, it is a tiny minority who will be truly inconvenienced.
For one thing, who actually gets any mail that they want these days. For me personally, it is once a month when my National Geographic arrives and once a year when I get a birthday card from my mom.
My wife gets a little bit more than I do, but even then if we checked it once a month, we wouldn’t be missing anything.
We pay all of our bills electronically, so even a lot of that unwanted mail is moot.
This is also borne out by the statistics. In 2014, Canada Post delivered 1.4 billion fewer pieces of mail than in 2006.
It is just not a ballot box issue, I’m afraid, except maybe in downtown Montreal from what I hear.
—Thom Barker
Little changed
And so Yorkton enters the brave new world of corner mailboxes.
Unless I missed it the world did not come to a fiery end, one coinciding with the end of home mail delivery.
Of course unlike what some of the rhetoric suggested, I hadn’t expected as much as a ripple from the change.
I grew up on a farm. The first address we had was Clashmoor. It was a small place with the post office a room, with the post mistress and family living in the same building.
That post office would close and in time the village itself, the store burning, the elevator closing, the branch line abandoned and removed. I understand the whole village area is now cropland.
Eldersley was the next address, green metal mailboxes in front of the one bay volunteer fire hall.
And then a box in the post office in Tisdale.
Never was there even a thought of home delivery, and we survived just fine.
And that was in an era when the family allowance cheque still came via mail.
When letters were physical things.
Today most cheques are direct deposited.
Letters come through email.
Even parcel delivery when made by Canada Post are usually a notice so you get in your vehicle and go to pick them up at a depot.
Home delivery, which was also suspect in the sense it was far from a universal service, not even everyone in Yorkton had it, has increasingly become unneeded.
As for the boxes, they are aesthetically nice, far from being an eye sore on the streets.
They do foster a level of physical activity getting us to walk for at least the mail.
So when all factors are tabulated, the mail still gets to us, the world changed a little, but to no ill effect, and the world rolls on.
— Calvin Daniels
Well-received
When it comes to the new mailboxes at the end of the block, I was originally on one side of the fence, but have since came over to the other side.
Originally, I didn’t like the idea of walking out to get the mail. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not due to being lazy. I simply enjoyed conversing (albeit only briefly) with the mailman/woman whenever they had something for me (even though it was usually a William… that is, a bill).
I also wasn’t a fan of it because I thought the elderly people wouldn’t enjoy walking out to the mailbox daily to fetch the flyers and post.
Man, was I wrong about that one! See, my mailbox is shared with a retirement community, so when I go get the mail I usually end up speaking with a veteran Yorktonite, and it turns out that the majority of them absolutely love the new mailboxes.
To many, they feel as if it’s a blast from the past, having to physically leave the house to get the mail is something that reminds them of their childhood on a daily basis.
After speaking with several older members of the community, I now feel as it the new mailboxes are a grand idea. They honestly bring smiles to the faces of people, all the while forcing people to be even slightly more active, which is never a bad thing.
—Randy Brenzen
