My eighty-eight-year-old mom phoned the other night. She phoned to tell me that the mailbox at the corner of her street had disappeared. This may not sound like disturbing news to you, but I found it disturbing.
I knew right away which mailbox she meant: the one on the hydro pole at the corner of Broadway and Torrington in Ottawa’s Glebe neighbourhood. It had been there for over seventy-five years. It’s a neighbourhood landmark. As children we were told, “Don’t go past the mailbox.” Mrs. Lennox, our elderly next-door neighbour at the time, would give us a chocolate bar to run to the box and mail her letters. Coming home late as teenagers, so as not to have car noise in front of the house, the drop point was, you guessed it, the mailbox. And after Dad’s hip operation last year, when he could walk to the mailbox and back, we knew he was going to be just fine.
Over the years, hundreds of thousands of letters, Christmas cards, birthday greetings, and sympathy notes have been posted there and sent all over the world—feelings and sentiments, wishes and thoughts.
I’m writing this letter on the ferry to Vancouver. Tomorrow I’m flying to Ottawa for two weeks with my parents. Now, when I send my postcards home to B.C., I’ll no longer be able to take the familiar walk to the corner to post them. Instead I’ll have to get in the car, drive ten or twelve blocks to the nearest post office, and hope there’s a parking spot. It’s not the same.
That stoic little red soldier has been at its post for hundreds of seasons, weathering sun and rain, snow and ice. Through World War II, and over ten prime ministers. Its welcoming slot has accepted generations of paid bills, life stories, and shared secrets.
Canada Post tells me that a mailbox needs fifty letters a day to remain viable. Our corner mailbox no longer met this criteria and it had to go. I’ve suggested they put it back, sealed up, as a piece of neighbourhood history, as an artifact. I have not received a response.
I’m very aware that things are changing rapidly all around me. I’m told that I should accept these changes and adapt. Every once in a while, though, one of these changes upsets a balance in my heart, or a memory, and there’s an impulse to reject the “new” way. This is one of those times. I believe that the culture and history of a neighbourhood deserve to be protected. The mailbox at the corner was an eloquent testament to times gone by.
Duncan, British Columbia