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Chilliwack thief has family feeling Grinched Jennifer Feinberg The Progress
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Canada Post mail carrier, Kevin Durham, makes deliveries on Tupper Street on Thursday morning. Canada Post says home deliver will be discontinued in Chilliwack in the new year. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
Canada Post sets end date for home delivery Jennifer Feinberg The Progress Chilliwack’s door-to-door mail delivery service is limping to the finish line. Canada Post notified its staff in Chilliwack this week that more than 12,000 addresses with home delivery will get switched over to community mailboxes by the fall of 2015. The Posties are none too happy and urge Canadians to make their views known. Peter Butcher, president of the Upper Valley local of Canadian Union of Postal Workers, was told Wednesday as he was sorting mail for his rural route. At least eight delivery routes will be lost, but no staff layoffs are expected.
“We’re still fighting this,” Butcher said. “We’d like to see door-to-door service remain intact.” They knew the switchover was coming. The news was announced a year ago, and most of Sardis and townhome complexes use CMs. But they did not know it would be so quick. “But I have no idea why Chilliwack was picked to end delivery next year, which is only the second year in a five-year process.” There is massive opposition to the delivery eradication across the country, Butcher noted, and citizens should let their MP and Canada Post know how they feel. Canada Post is embarking on a consultation process through the mail. They brown envelopes
containing the surveys requesting feedback. “This morning, we informed employees at our Chilliwack LCD Main depot that home addresses in the area — postal codes starting with V2P — will be converting from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes in Fall 2015,” said Canada Post spokesperson Daria Hill in an email. The changes are coming as part of the Five-point Action Plan by the Crown corporation, but will not affect apartment dwellers who get their mail in the lobby. Info packages with a mail-in survey are arriving soon to allow people to express “their priorities and preferences” about the new delivery method of their mail, said Hill.
But some citizens are “angry and upset” by all the problems it will cause, Butcher added citing: theft, snow removal, frozen locks, to poor lighting and safety, downloading of costs onto municipalities. There are “serious implications” for seniors and those with mobility challenges who have specifically chosen to live where they live so they can get home mail delivery. Almost 400 groups and municipalities have passed resolutions or raised concerns about the cuts, especially the end of home mail delivery, he said. But Canada Post reps said they will work with city planning departments to pick “suitable locations” for the new mailboxes. Continued: MAIL/ p5
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“Mommy, all I want for Christmas is to have our snowman back.” A thief with sticky fingers has done a number on a Chilliwack family’s Christmas spirit after their beloved decorative snowman was stolen from outside their front door. Katrina Eng is putting a message out to her community to see if anyone has seen their five-foot-tall Frosty. “We would love to get him back.” The snowman is brown, she said, which makes him unique, and covered in wicker vines, almost antique-style, with little white lights, a waving mechanical arm and a springy orange nose. It’s put a damper on their Christmas spirit, she admits. Someone took off with “Frosty” as they called him, brazenly coming to the back of their townhouse complex to do it. “I came home from work and it was gone,” Eng said. It was a big blow to their Christmas spirit. “They had to unplug it first. It’s pretty big and cumbersome, so they would have needed a truck. You couldn’t carry it down the street.” It was in three pieces that were ziptied together. The snowman had a motor inside to run the mechanical arm that waves. She made a police report, but there’s been no sign of the snowman they’ve had for five years since picking it up for halfprice at a Boxing Day dale. “It was the kids who picked it out.” The Engs had just served a massive Christmas dinner for 400 people at Evans elementary the day before the theft. They cooked 31 turkeys for the students, teachers, parents and special guests. And then this happened. “It felt so good and I was starting to get in an awesome Christmas mood,” Eng said. “And then the Grinch stole it. Our kids just want the snowman back.”