Come Hell or High Water, the Mail Went Through in the Old Days

In my recent caption for the coming Christmas Chronicle, I sort of joked that, thanks to email, hardly anyone mails Christmas cards any more, with or without an envelope.

It wasn’t always so, of course. For more than three-quarters of a century Christmas cards were mailed in western world countries by the millions each November-December. But that’s all changed now.

One can argue that our digital technology is to blame. Why use “snail mail” when you can send and receive an email anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes? It’s much less personal than a card but... But.

I believe there’s more to it than that, however. Mail delivery as I knew it from childhood through middle age or so, was—or seemed—to be much more of a bedrock Canadian institution; something that people trusted, used and relied upon without a second thought. Long before the internet and couriers we had ‘posties’ in uniform going their rounds with their black bag hanging over their shoulders, the red boxes at strategic intersections, daily (well, Monday-Friday) home deliveries. Not only rock-solid dependable but inexpensive.

Have you mailed anything lately? Did you suffer sticker shock?

In short, times have really, really changed. That old expression, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” is pure nostalgia now.

But it was that way once. In next week’s Chronicles I tell you of the day when the B.C. mail went through, come hell or high water, sometimes at the risk of the carrier’s safety, even his life.

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