Opinion: Not ready to say goodbye (2024)

By: Patricia Dawn RobertsonPosted: 2:00 AM CST Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024

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Opinion

I’m a seasoned freelance writer, so I can relate to striking Canada Post employees. While I’m not unionized, I do have the same sinking feeling about my economic prospects.

Daily newspaper outlets — which once dominated the media landscape and were high on my client roster — now valiantly struggle to stay profitable and relevant. Just like Canada Post.

To make up my income shortfall, I can teach soul-destroying Zoom classes to emerging writers and pray they don’t choose the “Leave” button.

Or I can take a straight job in a sector that isn’t crashing, one that still wants to employ a 61-year-old woman. I’m a woman of a certain vintage whose charming skills include political punditry and conversational French.

Our dear old postal service goes into the hole every year so I can dispatch Christmas greeting cards for a pittance. Is it sustainable? No. But people of my vintage, circa 1963, are attached to it. Please don’t take it away from us.

Like Canada Post, GenXers are outmoded — but we’re still useful, like the elderly relative whose regular landline calls provide valuable entertainment and authentic engagement.

I agree that texting is an efficient means of communication. If your social circle includes those under 50, it’s a grim necessity. Case in point: my landline only rings when someone is trying to con me out of my meagre life savings.

As I write this, my iPhone just proclaimed U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s latest cabinet appointment. This news is offset by four inbox come-ons from U.S. newspapers offering deeply discounted subscriptions.

Why would I pay for online news when I can subscribe to Crave and watch HBO’s Chimp Crazy?

Two weeks ago, I was going to mail a real birthday card to my high school friend on the West Coast. The looming strike gave me pause. Instead, I took a photo of the card and emailed it to her. But it’s just not the same since no postal worker had to get on his waders and slog through an atmospheric weather cyclone to deliver it.

I live in a small town. The post office remains a central hub. I can pick up my mail and help my friend, Terry, get elected to town council with a few well-placed words of endorsement.

Oh, sure, FedEx also services our community. I can switch to my street address on my Amazon preferences but that means I miss out on social time.

I work from home. A trip to the post office is an outing. It means I have to get out of my Eddie Bauer Christmas-plaid pyjama bottoms and leave the house.

Unless there’s a country ambusher at my front door. Then I quickly wriggle into my stretchy skinny jeans while I shout: “Hold on, I’ll be right there!”

Back to my pitch in favour of Canada Post employees: they’re genteel Maggie Smiths to grubby TikTok influencers. They’re Second World War veterans to combative Trump supporters clad in patriotic sparkle ballcaps.

I’m not ready to give up on mail. Put down that iPhone! How many times a day do we say that to a distracted loved one who squanders hours on texts? When mail was the only form of communication, we would read letters to one another. Out loud. And then save them in a special box, along with print photos, as a keepsake.

A word to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: please don’t legislate these workers back to their overlit distribution centres. Let them strike until they get a fair cost-of-living increase.

We’ll all just have to go without those braggy Christmas newsletters and summer group photos tucked into gold-trimmed greeting cards. Don’t you just love to dissect your more extroverted relatives’ accounts of exotic beach holidays with their doting and truly exceptional grandchildren?

Join me and take to the streets in support of our antiquated and unprofitable postal service and their staff. Only then can we enjoy a lovely Christmas dinner and then head to the sofa to watch Love, Actually.

Let’s keep Canada Post — however costly or outdated. As my late mother liked to forewarn: “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.” And I do. But I still have her Christmas letters.

Thank you, Canada Post.

Patricia Robertson is an independent journalist based in Wakaw, Sask.

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