Dropping a letter into a mailbox is a time-honoured convenience but at the corner of Marleau Road and O'Grady Road, it was the mailbox that got dropped. The two community boxes where more than a dozen people pick up their mail had someone shove it to the ground on Tuesday, where, said a neighbour, it stayed flat until the next day.
"It happens on average twice a month," said John Joynson, a 10-year resident of the area. "Those boxes were moved there about nine and a half years ago and conservatively I'd say it has been knocked over 100 times."
If so, there is little record of it with Canada Post, said the federal mail service. Local contacts and a national spokesperson with Canada Post said a file is only generated when their maintenance contractor is dispatched to the scene.
Joynson said often it is the neighbours themselves who put the boxes back to rights, but sometimes the damage is already done to the contents inside.
"Soaking wet mail," he explained.
Anick Losier, an Ottawa-based spokeswoman for Canada Post, said mailbox tip-overs are not uncommon and most are set back up within hours of the report. "I haven't heard that it takes two days. We know how important it is to get mail, especially at this time of year."
There might be extenuating circumstances, anything from backordered repair parts to a high call volume, that could extend the maintenance response but these were not common even at this time of year.
"They are working late at night, Saturday and Sunday too, to get the Christmas mail to everybody on time, that is our focus," she said.
"[Today, Thursday] we hit the one billion items-mark for mail we have handled in December, that is just December. We have added planes, trains and trucks and 2,400 extra people just to help everybody's mail get through on time.
"Monday was our busiest delivery day, with about 1.2 million parcels."
It is never the mail carriers themselves who would set a fallen box back up, due to the risks with lifting the awkward, heavy item, said Kelvin Olson, a supervisor at Canada Post's Prince George operation.
He added that when a carrier comes across a community mailbox laid flat, it disrupts their delivery patterns because the mail cannot be put into the tilted lockers.
Joynson said he took issue also with the time it takes him to get through to anyone when he calls Canada Post in regards to a tipped box.
When The Citizen called the numbers provided, they were answered immediately.
He wanted the message to get through to the federal agency that it was time the corner of Marleau and O'Grady had their community mailboxes set in permanent place like others only a few blocks away, so vandals would be unable to continue pushing the neighbourhood envelope.
