A notice indicating they had less than 24 hours to claim their mail came as a surprise to some residents of Brooklyn last week.

Canada Post left the notices in post boxes at the Brooklyn office Tuesday, Oct. 11 and before noon the next morning, the mailboxes were cleaned out.

In an e-mail, a spokesperson for Canada Post said, “that due to reasons beyond our control, we were notified that the Brooklyn Post Office would close at end of day Wednesday, October 12. Customers were notified of the closure on Tuesday, October 11 by letter and flyers posted on-site.”

Letter sent by Canada Post to Brooklyn residents. Photo courtesy of Vicki Amirault.

The post office was in the Wa-Su-Wek building on Hillside Road and operated by one of their staff members. Board member Grace Conrad says they just couldn’t afford to operate the postal outlet any longer.

“One person is supposed to be doing that plus being able to look after some of the Wa-Su-Wek stuff,” said Conrad. “We don’t actually get enough money from [the] post office, or whatever, to pay a worker. We’re only getting a little bit of money.”

Conrad says the Wa-Su-Wek board members met Friday, Oct. 7 and decided they couldn’t continue to operate the post office at a loss. She contacted Canada Post that day to inform them of the board’s decision.

The board was prepared to continue running the postal service for 30 to 60 days to give Canada Post time to come up with an alternative method of delivery. Conrad was surprised when a postal worker showed up at 10 a.m. on Wednesday and cleared out the mail.

Anyone with an outside post box is unaffected by the change while roughly 300 people who used the interior boxes, as well as those looking to buy stamps or collect larger parcels now need to travel to Liverpool for postal service.

District 4 Coun. Vicki Amirault has been working to get answers for her constituents since the notices went out. She says it’s not just the 5 km drive to Liverpool that is a problem for Brooklyn residents.

“They are very upset. It’s the drive and as you know, our parking spaces are very limited in front of the Liverpool post office,” said Amirault. “So, if those parking spaces are full that means they either have to park in back of the Royal Bank or they have to park down in the parking lot and walk. It’s very inconvenient.”

Canada Post will be installing 19 community mailboxes on the Wa-Su-Wek property to service the 300 customers who have been displaced.

While that solves the problem of getting letters and smaller parcels to Brooklyn residents, Amirault is concerned moving services to Liverpool could cause other issues.

“It’s creating confusion for Liverpool post office workers as well. They have taken on a lot of extra work. And the residents of Liverpool as well, there’s only so many workers so their mail is going to slow down, probably, as well,” said Amirault.

The Canada Post spokesperson says the community mailboxes have been ordered and will be installed as soon as possible.

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