So. No more the Jolly Postman. It’ll be pointless for Canadian parents to buy that clever hands-on book for their little ones at future Christmastimes if Canada Post goes through with its threat to stop hand-delivery of mail in urban and suburban neighbourhoods.
The little dears won’t have a clue what it’s all about.
The posties, male and female, are the last to be withdrawn from what were once the regular comings-and-goings in the gentle suburbias of the past.
The iceman cometh not. It has been a long time since he bore on his burlap back the block of ice which, sort of, would keep things fresh in the icebox.
The milkman and breadman in their wagons drawn by horses, with rubber horseshoes to keep the noise down, no longer clop through the streets.
The grocery boy balancing paper bags on the handlebars of his bicycle comes to the back door no more.
A Sam Kee laundry no longer sends its employees to pick up dirty clothes wrapped in a dirty sheet and return what has been washed and pressed wrapped in brown paper packages tied with string.
Sturdy men and boys don’t wrestle malodorous metal garbage cans roughly to the curb any more and return them empty — and still malodorous — with a comforting crash.
Not so long ago, mail delivery was twice daily and six days a week. It has always been as dependable a routine as the delivery of the daily newspaper, even if the carrier of the mail passed by without stopping, even if what was dropped off was junk.
Indeed, it’s odd that those who deliver the mail still call themselves letter carriers. Most of what they carry to us these days consists of bills and offers to invest money or remove unwanted hair.
There’s no need in this day of instant electronic conjoining to write letters, even to loved ones. Letters once could be crafted to give advice, express emotion, convey love. Many were worth keeping and have been treasured, an archive of lives lived.
Today, people with nothing to say are encouraged to broadcast it to the world. I don’t imagine anyone sends a tear-marked love letter any more: A curt text will do.
Something has gone out of our lives when what we long for, or dread, is no longer brought by a human being capable of feeling.
It might not be in their job description, but letter carriers can be a sort of neighbourhood watch — especially over the aged and infirm whose doors they come to.
Some silly politician in Ottawa accuses Canada Post of “isolating” seniors and the disabled by proposing to end direct delivery and making them get as best they can to “super” mailboxes as their country cousins have done for years.
A lot of old folks I know could use the exercise. For those beyond or not up to it, there’s a simple solution. It’s called neighbourliness, and it’s much stronger in close communities.
Our neighbourhoods need not be unfriendly, uncaring places. Mine is a mix of able and less-abled bodies, and when the need is there, the will to meet it is not far away.
My mother in her last years was “checked up on” regularly by a concerned gent down the street who’d visit with a shaker-full of martinis.
I feel for the vanishing letter carriers, walking defiantly through our winters in shorts, breathing fresh air and being jolly even in the rain. But it’s not as carefree a life as once it was.
Posties have had to contend for some time with grumpy old folks in electric scooters, reckless kids on skateboards, madcap cyclists, unpredictable dogs and deer sprayers.
Now it looks as if they’d have to duck around cruise-ship buses in James Bay, dodge sewage trucks in Esquimalt and avoid getting caught in deer-cull traps in Oak Bay.
And just as we’ve learned to do without ice, to shop for milk, bread and groceries, to wash our own clothes, and to wheel our waste to the curb, we’ll learn to pick up our mail in communal boxes.
We’ve been pampered too long.
