Don’t. Mess. With. The. Mail.
With rotating strikes now underway at Canada Post, that’s Sandy Racicot’s feeling about it all.
She works from home in Montreal and has happily embraced technology. She Tweets most days, pays bills online, but says there are two things she won’t part with: cards and books. For both, she relies on the mail system to give and receive.
“E-cards just don’t cut it. I’ve received them through work, but cards in the mail? I appreciate those more.”
It’s all about the texture, the feel, the dimension and the colours, she said.
Racicot spends hours picking out cards for birthdays and anniversaries well in advance and keeps them in a filofax organized by the month.
“I’m quite upset by the postal strike, as you can imagine,” she says, half laughing. “A lot of people get married in June, so there are a lot of anniversaries on top of the birthdays!”
Jennifer McHugh says cards in the mail are like a present.
“Email is fast, but snail mail is thoughtful,” she says.
The Ottawa woman scrapbooks her cards - but not the emailed versions.
“Those just go away. Even your memories will fade over time, but a real card is permanent. It’s a nice reminder, especially of people who’ve passed. I still have cards from my dad. It’s something he held in his hand and wrote on.”
She’s not alone. A Canada Post survey last Christmas found eight out of 10 Canadians preferred getting cards in the mail - an increase over 71 per cent in 2008.
Canada's unionized postal workers walked off the job Thursday night in Winnipeg on the first of a series of rotating 24-hour strikes. Hamilton, Ont. is the next city set to be hit by the labour action, beginning late Friday.
Canada Post has said it needs to address labour costs, noting the letter-mail business has fallen by more than 17 per cent since 2006 due to digital communications.
The union's chief negotiator would give no indication Friday when the rotating work stoppages that began late Thursday would end.
At Ottawa’s Vitality Massage Therapy clinic, owner Kim Plewes remains committed to mailing handwritten Christmas cards, client reminders and thank-you notes for referrals.
“It’s the way to go for business building,” she says. “When you’re dealing with a personal business like massage therapy, you don’t want impersonal communication. You want every client to feel important and thought about.”
What about couriers? Too expensive, Plewes says. Calls to clients would also cut into her bottom line.
“Time is money. Because I don’t have a receptionist, time making calls is time I could be bringing money in.”
A survey by Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, an advocacy group for small and medium-sized business, found that a postal strike increases operating costs for its members by an average of $250 a day, due to lost revenue the need to find other ways to ship and deliver.
Some argue the postal service is dying in the digital and no one will notice it’s gone, but Anick Losier is hearing plenty of concern from small businesses.
“It’s what they use to send their goods and receive payment,” says the Canada Post spokeswoman. “They don’t have an online system. The mail is all they have. Their cash flow will dry up with work disruptions.”
Losier says Canada Post remains the only company that goes to every household in the country. If you’re among Canada’s six million rural residents, that matters.
“We’re the last standing business in some communities,” Losier says. “They use the post for everything.”
Christina Bird sends bills by mail from her Birdhouse Garden Market in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, to customers up and down the coast. It’s how most of them pay her. Although UPS could reach some, the courier is expensive. Hand-delivering is an option, but staffing and gas costs would cut into her bottom line.
“Can we count on everyone else to hand deliver? I’m sure people won’t go out of their way to make sure we get our money from them.”
Up north, the mail system is a lifeline - in more ways than one.
For the longest time, Jennifer Jenney of London, Ont., was a magazine ‘flipper’ who casually burned through magazines. That was before she left the city to spend the year teaching at a native reserve in Lac Brochet, Man.
“Now, I read them cover to cover,” she laughs. “There’s no newspaper here, so when Maclean’s arrives in the mail, look out!”
The town is accessible only by air or ice road, internet access is unpredictable, as is the telephone.
“We really look forward to the mail arriving,” Jenney says. “It’s our link with civilization.”
Snail mail is also the only way Jenney can buy clothing, ship her belongings home at the end of the school year and access prescription medications.
“If we have to have medicine, we’ll be in trouble with a strike. Mail service is a necessity for us. It’s a huge issue in an isolated community. I don’t know what we will do.”
With a report from The Canadian Press