FORT QU’APPELLE, Sask. – There is still some room in the post office in this south-
central Saskatchewan town.
Postmaster Bonnie Bertwistle expects Christmas parcels and letters will begin jamming up
her work area this week.
On Dec. 12, the seasonal flood had barely begun.
Two carts loaded with parcels sat in the back but there was still plenty of floor space for
staff to get through to put letters and papers into mailboxes.
“I noticed the jump on Friday,” said Bertwistle. “The mail going out was phenomenal. We
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weren’t prepared. I can imagine it’ll go right till the end of December now.”
Like most communities across the Prairies, the post office in this town is bracing for the
Christmas crunch.
At Fort Qu’Appelle, the mail comes in every day at 7 a.m. from Regina and brings about
300 to 400 parcels at a time now.
Bertwistle said the postal staff will call people who haven’t been in recently to let them
know they have parcels. She said the office also takes “Santa mail” from children.
It is not only seasonal mail that is making her five-person office busy. The town of Fort
Qu’Appelle draws on surrounding farms, Indian bands and its year-round resort status.
Retirees from nearby Regina have helped raise the number of postal mail boxes from 1,400
three years ago to more than 2,000 today.
Brian Garagan of Canada Post said parcel volumes on the Prairies this year are four to five
times higher than usual. There were 2,795 parcels handled in Regina Dec. 13, 2,966 parcels
in Saskatoon and 7,500 each in Calgary, Winnipeg and Edmonton.
