New community-mailbox sites in St. Vital

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This article was published 28/11/2014 (4143 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Residents of St. Vital, you should tip your postie well this holiday season — by this time next year, home mail delivery will be but a memory for a lot of you.

Canada Post announced its latest round of areas Thursday to be switched to community mailboxes, and this time it will be postal codes starting with R2M and R2N.

Canada Post says the conversion covers an area between the Red and Seine rivers, starting on the north at the southern edge of the St. Boniface Golf Course, and extending just beyond the floodway.

Coun. Brian Mayes (St. Vital) said Thursday his entire ward and a part of the St. Norbert ward will be affected, although “parts of R2N are already mainly community mailboxes.”

“I know most of the north part of the ward is opposed — there’s a lot of older people in the ward,” said Mayes, who personally opposes the switch.

Mayes said he saw nowhere to put the community mailboxes in older areas except on the boulevard directly in front of homes.

“It is odd timing, given that they just announced a profit (Wednesday),” Mayes said.

He has a meeting coming up soon with Conservative Saint Boniface MP Shelly Glover and will ask if there is any way Canada Post might be persuaded to change its mind.

“It does cut through some neighbourhoods,” Canada Post media relations manager Phil Legault said from Ottawa. “It zigzags all the way up,” following the twists and turns of the rivers.

Affected residents should watch their mailboxes — the ones by their front doors, to which letter carriers still trek every weekday regardless of weather — for an information package and a mail-in survey.

Where you want your community mailbox is up to you, Canada Post says.

“They’ll be providing us with that feedback… small clusters close to their homes, or large clusters farther from their homes,” said Legault.

John Hamilton, general manager of communications for Canada Post, said the Crown corporation is responsible for clearing snow and ensuring community mailboxes are accessible — to a point.

“We’re not going to plow through snowbanks,” he said.

“We work with the local municipality. We want to be sure people can access the box.”

Hamilton said some newer homes in R2M and R2N may already have community mailboxes and have had them since the homes were built.

There is no maximum distance you’ll have to go from your home to your mail.

“We locate them within the neighbourhood,” he said. “It might be the neighbourhood, it might be that street, or a crescent.”

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers could not be reached Thursday.

About 12,400 homes and another 70 businesses in postal codes starting with R2P and R2V lost their delivery service earlier this fall. Those homes are in the Maples, Garden City, West Kildonan and Margaret Park areas.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca