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The use of travelling post offices, with mail clerks sorting and distributing
the mails from the railway, was first introduced in Canada in 1854 on the
line between Niagara Falls and London. By 1857 this system was in operation
on more than 1,400 miles of railway.
A growing interest in the Red River settlements and the northwest regions
induced the government to authorize the establishment of mail communication
through Canadian territory by way of Sault Ste. Marie, Lake Superior, and
the voyageur route to Lake Winnipeg and Red River. On the upper lakes,
mails were carried twice a month in summer between Collingwood and Fort
William, and from Fort William by canoe to and from Red River. When
navigation closed, a monthly service was maintained by means of snowshoes
and dog trains.
A parcel post service was instituted within the Province of Canada in
1859 with a weight limit of two pounds. The postage rate was one shilling
three pence per pound. With the adoption of the decimal currency in July
of the same year, the rate became 25¢ per pound. Postage stamps valued at
1¢, 5¢, 10¢, 12126 and 17¢, were also issued at the same time.
Following the confederation of the Canadian provinces and their various
postal systems in 1867, the postal service continued to expand. This expansion
was most evident in the prairie provinces. Postal arrangements in the vast
territory between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains were handled
by six post offices at the time of confederation. By 1946 there were more
than 3,440 post offices in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
The first railway mail service in the west was established over the Winnipeg-
Brandon section of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1882, and the following
year this was extended to Calgary. Continuous daily mail service from the
Atlantic to the Pacific began in 1886.
Air mail service was officially inaugurated in Canada in an experimental
way on October 4, 1927, when the first contract air mail system was opened
between Bissett and Wadhope, Manitoba. This service was halted during
the depression, but reopened in 1939 with the inauguration of the Trans-
Canada air mail.
The Trans-Canada air mail system, consisting of a main artery 3,900 miles
in length from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Victoria, British Columbia, is
intersected at strategic points by branch and feeder lines linking up important
cities and areas off the main route and forming a vast network across Canada
from east to west and from the United States border to the Arctic.
Today a letter from St. John’s, Newfoundland, can travel to Victoria,
British Columbia, a distance of almost 4,000 miles, in little more than a day.
City dwellers and people in rural
areas have their mail brought to
their mail box. Rural delivery is
made by many different means of
transportation, including the old-
fashioned horse and buggy.
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