Perceptions by Gerry Warner

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

You know, there’s almost a tear in my eye as I read the evocative words above. Those words, though they are the unofficial motto of the US Postal Service, stand for posties everywhere faithfully making their rounds through snow drifts, biting winds and searing summer heat, not to mention dodging vicious dogs, to faithfully deliver those precious pieces of mail that used to form a virtual life-line between we small, unimportant individuals and the big, wide world and all that it entails.

Those, unfortunate enough to have grown up in the Digital Age, will no doubt have difficulty appreciating just how important a few words scribbled on paper from afar can be to the anxious recipient. Can you not imagine the touching sentiments, and perhaps steamy correspondence, that went on in the romantic past between the great lovers of history? Anthony and Cleopatra, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Napoleon and Josephine, your faithful correspondent and ???  Enough of that! I get into trouble easily enough as it is.

Kidding aside, mail itself goes as far back as ancient Persia and King Cyrus The Great in 550 B.C. when it was more of a courier system for conveying military intelligence (wouldn’t you know it). Letters are even mentioned in the Old Testament (Esther VIII). The Persians were the first to use men (soldiers) on horseback to deliver mail and I don’t need to tell you what this eventually led to more than 3,000 years later – the famous ‘Pony Express,’ carrying saddle bags of mail across the Old West prior to the American Civil War. Ironically, it was during the Civil War that postal employee Joseph W. Briggs noticed women outside a Cleveland post office in cold weather waiting for letters from their soldier husbands and ordered the letters carried directly to their homes. This led quickly to direct home delivery in the US, and in short order, around the world.

And now it has come to this; email instead of snail mail, electronic bytes instead of paper, efficiency instead of romance. Fill in the blanks. However you do it, it’s a bleaker world and unfortunately Canada seems to be leading the way. England and the U.S still have home-mail, delivery six-days-a-week, not five, although the US Congress is now considering cutting Saturday delivery. But that’s still a lot better than Canada, which hasn’t had six days-a-week delivery for years and only one-third of Canadians even receive home delivery and now Canada Post has announced virtual elimination of home delivery in urban centres within five years.

What gives?

Thanks to email, postal delivery volumes are dropping all over the world, not just Canada. Postal systems world-wide are also losing money to varying degrees, but no other country has announced such draconian measures as Canada Post. We are a large country with huge distances for mail delivery, but the same is true of the US and it still maintains a much higher standard of mail service than we do. Are their posties better than ours? Do they walk faster? Are their mailbags lighter? Are their houses closer together? I know this sounds silly, but why the great discrepancy between Canadian and American levels of mail service? You tell me. I’ve never seen ‘Super Boxes’ in the US, but then again I’ve never really looked.

Critics are saying Canada Post needs innovation, not cuts that would lay off up to 8,000 postal workers. Cut service and boost costs to a dollar-a-stamp. Sheesh! How’s that going to win Canada Post any friends or new customers? Universal use of Super Boxes will be less efficient for everyone and especially hard on those with mobility issues, seniors, disabled and the like. And what about community post offices? They’re eliminating and downsizing them too. Is this bit of civilized living also to be taken away from us?

Canada Post, I think you better re-think this one.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and a man of letters. He’s also a Cranbrook City Councillor. His opinions are his own.

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