Walking the walk A brisk stroll with a Charlottetown letter carrier highlights the challenges and rewards of daily mail delivery life
MARY MACKAY The Guardian
If you were to walk a mile in Gerry Watts’ shoes, you’d still have a long way to go.
That’s because this letter carrier’s daily rounds are about 13 kilometres (eight miles) a day through the streets of Charlottetown, which in winter can be a hazardous slippery workplace, despite appropriate footwear and equipment.
So in response to Canada Post’s invitation to join a letter carrier to see what challenges they face, The Guardian tagged along with Watts on a typical delivery route.
“It’s a beautiful day,” says Watts as he starts out on a windless -6 C morning that is a letter carrier’s winter dream.
Watts’ delivery route, Walk 12, is centred around the Mount Edward Road area and covers 485 homes and businesses.
It is one of 35 letter carrier walks in Charlottetown and Stratford and 16 in Summerside. These are the only areas that have urban letter carriers on the Island.
For Watts, each morning begins with up to three hours of sorting mail at the Charlottetown Mail Processing Plant into specific addresses and packing them into the order in which they will be delivered along the route.
The first batch goes directly into Watts’ over-the-shoulder sack, which is filled to a maximum of 15 kilograms (35 pounds).
The rest is distributed to grey relay boxes along his walk.
“You don’t always have (that weight). Once I get rid of these bundles the weight will go down,” says Watts, an avid go-to-the-gym guy, who finds this daily effort is all part and parcel of staying fit.
“Actually I don’t get (to the gym) a whole lot in the winter. I’m on more of a maintenance workout in the winter. Once spring hits I go at it quite heavy from spring until fall,” he adds.
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow will generally deter a letter carrier from his or her duties, but when the latter two are stockpiled in driveways, walkways or stairs, things can get dicey in terms of delivery.
And on this day, the recent ice storm has every surface slathered in a thick sheet of sheer ice, so the gripping metal spikes on Watts’ boots sound like snow tires intermittently hitting pavement.
“You ought to hear me when I’m in the doctor’s office because they have tile flooring. It’s like shisk, shisk, shisk. They all hear me coming,” he says.
What many Canada Post clients might not know is that there is a cut-off point where letter carriers can choose not to deliver mail for safety reasons.
“It’s a judgment call,” Watts says, who fell hard on the afternoon that the ice storm started.
“I went down, but I didn’t get hurt, though. There’s a knack to falling, too. Not that you’re ever ready for it, but you can just sort of train yourself how to fall. They give us training on how to do it. The big thing when you fall is just relaxing. Don’t tighten up but that’s easier said than done, right?
Probably the largest challenge for letter carriers is the environment in terms of ice and snow, says Brian Hurley, local area manager for P.E.I. for Canada Post.
“It’s essential for our customers to understand the importance of keeping their driveways and stairs shovelled and ice-free. Almost three-quarters of our injuries (in Canada Post) are with letter carriers, and they have to do with slips and falls,” he adds.
There is a safety campaign for customers and employees to try to reduce these winter-related incidents. One aspect is a contest in which letter carriers are being asked to submit the names of customers on their walks that do the best job of keeping their driveways, walkways and stairs on their properties free of snow and ice.
“Essentially do the stewardship to their properties that allow the carriers to do their work properly,” says Hurley.
“The intention is that we will recognize the customer with some shovels and salt and things of that nature.”
Another serious challenge letter carriers face is dogs — loose dogs even more so.
“We’ve been lucky. The last couple of years we’ve only had a handful (of incidents),” Hurley says.
This, he adds, is due to the vigilance of the carriers identifying where the problem dogs are and Canada Post contacting homeowners to ensure their dog is restrained in a place where it cannot come in contact with carriers.
That’s not to say that every dog is a fang-baring one. In fact, one gives him a card at Christmas.
“Oh, here’s my little buddy,” Watts says, as a bouncing ball of fur excitedly yelps at his arrival at an inner city mobile home.
He deftly pulls from his stash of doggie biscuits he carries to appease canine appetites.
“Most dogs are good. You get the odd real bad one. I’m pretty good on this walk. I don’t have really bad ones. I’m comfortable. I’ve got to know them. If you don’t know the dog then it can get pretty scary,” he says.
Once a dog was so frighteningly aggressive Watts was forced to kick out to protect himself. He was off work for a month because he ripped a tendon in his leg.
“And you meet the odd bad cat every
See Walking, C2once in a while,” Watts admits with a smile as he passes by a typical feline perched in an ultimate ignorance stance on a porch railing.
In one household, a family that had a dog and a cat lost the former in a car accident.
“The dog got killed and the cat went crazy after that and you had to really watch yourself because the cat would come right from underneath trees and attack you,” Watts says.
“When you had shorts on in the summer, it would grab your leg. They’re worse than dogs. Dogs will bark generally where a cat won’t do that.”
Ever the outgoing talker, Watts stops briefly to speak with Clifford Jackson of Charlottetown, who is one of those great snow and ice clearing guys.
Chatting to people in the community and even keeping an informal eye on seniors just seems to come naturally with the job.
Letter carriers are a very visible part of the community, Hurley says.
“They may not put their lives at risk in terms of a police officer or a firefighter and those types of circumstances but their profile in the community is certainly one of stability and one of trust. . . ,” he adds.
“(In Canada), we typically hear of letter carriers saving people’s lives by going to the home and noticing that somebody has had a stroke or something along that line. When you’re out in the community and you have a . . . sense of your customers, you know when something is wrong.”
In Watts’ 23 years of delivering mail, this former marathon runner has tallied up more than 8,800 kilometres or 5,500 miles through the best and the worst
that Mother Nature can dish out.
“It’s all about trying to stay young, eh?” he laughs. “There’s no pressure as far as the (mind) goes. I like having weekends off. I like the exercise and I like meeting people and having fun with them.”
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Allan Garland from Oklahoma City, OK writes: Gerry has proved himself as good a family man as he is a carrier. Nice to see him recognized.
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TC from PE writes: Great story. Its not an easy job by any means.
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