As of this past Monday, it now costs $1.44 to mail an average sized letter with Canada Post. Last week the same opportunity was priced at a paltry $1.15. The politics of that jump in price don’t bear talking about by folks like me, but it does seem as if we have all just been given ringside seats to watch while someone shoots themself in the foot.
If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of mail. Not of the post office, just of mail. I love to send cards and letters and parcels by post to the beloveds in my life. In these days of preferred electronic communication, getting something from someone you actually know IRL, slipped through the mail slot in the front door, is almost at the same level of bewildering surprise as having a singing telegram performed for you on the front porch. (Hmmm, singing telegrams—a lost art or just an invasion of privacy?) (OH GOSH, they’re still available in my city!) (Expect to hear from me!!)
I have long been a fan of sending letters and am honoured to still use letter-writing as the means of keeping in touch with my 98-year-old Aunt who lives a number of provinces over. She and I exchange several letters per month and although she has extremely limited eyesight and deals with constant numbness in her hands, she sees our letter writing as physiotherapy and an exercise to keep her brain sharp. Plus, she’s got a huge crush on her postman, but that is secondary. I think. We have become very good friends through years of exchanging letters, and we genuinely enjoy the other’s company on the page. Although I am not able to drop over to her place every week for a cheery chat in person, a newsy colourful letter from me will entertain her and put in some time on those days that seem a bit too long. Plus, she gets to see Patrick.
The postal service in Canada is even older than my Aunt. Initially, while Mother England still had our young country tied to her apron strings, we were under the British General Post Office’s domain. Although there is no record of the first letter sent to Canada, the first missive ever sent from Canada was in August 1527 by an explorer named John Rut, and was addressed back home to King Henry VIII, of all people. Henry had commissioned him to sail over to North America and try to find the Northwest Passage. When John got to St. John’s (no relation) Newfoundland, he wrote a letter to the King giving him the gossip of who else was hanging about in the harbour and explained that he had lost contact with the second ship in his expedition during a storm at sea. He grovelled a bit before laying out his intention of going out to try and find that lost ship. Once he’d signed off, he promptly turned his ship to the south and made his way along the coast to Florida. He returned to England the next year but there is no further record of him after that. Typical Henry VIII!
While I love this documentation of the first letter out, I wonder where John Rut posted it.
By 1693, a paid courier system was running Governmental dispatches and letters, back and forth between Quebec City and Montreal. This was done by boat because roads weren’t a thing in that area until 1734.
It wasn’t until Benjamin Franklin was made Joint Deputy Postmaster General for the British Colonies in North America, that things started to happen. Ben was a very organized guy and saw the Big Picture while most others were just focused on trying to make it through the winter. He established a post office in Halifax, on what would eventually become Canadian soil, in order to connect the ‘northern colonies’ with the rest of the ‘Atlantic colonies’ to the south and to establish a link for packet service coming from Europe.
Questions over Benjamin Franklin’s murky political involvements eventually forced him to step down from his position with the Post Office (that doesn’t happen anymore) and a guy named Hugh Finlay was installed at a newly-planted Quebec City post office in 1763, as the new head guy. Hugh made terrific strides, opening first monthly then weekly mail routes from Montreal to New York, and turned a pretty profit for the British Post Office, no doubt fueled by the fact that he was raking in a fifth of the gross receipts received.
The Province of Canada was able to separate from the British Post Office and take their postal service into their own hands in 1851 when the Crown transferred the authority over to us. There was an immediate and outrageous hike in the price of stamps. (I made up that last bit.)
The first issue addressed by the new postal service was that a Canadian stamp would have to be designed and pressed into service. A mere two days into the transfer of postal power, James Morris, the guy in charge of the reorganization, met with Sandford Fleming to come up with an image to use on the stamp. Fleming suggested a beaver. GASP! Up until then, only an illustration of the reigning monarch had graced stamps around the world. That first 3 cent stamp (now known as the Threepenny Beaver) was designed, printed, and ready for circulation two months later. That’s how things happened back then.
In 1874, the post office started free letter delivery in Montreal. Although free delivery to rural communities didn’t commence until 1908, once that link was established, it was immeasurably helpful in banishing the isolation felt by many of the early Canadians.
1903 saw the birth of junk mail once permission was granted to deliver unaddressed printed materials to strangers who hadn’t requested them. We have collectively been known as “Occupant” ever since.
These and other stories imbedded deep within the long history of the post office in Canada, highlight the series of little steps that were taken, as time and imagination allowed, by a young country finding its footing in ways that would only ever make sense to its own brave and struggling citizens.
Still, even on the shoulders of this priceless legacy , $1.44 seems a bit rich, don’t you think?
