Pontiac’s Canada Post drivers, who have been on strike since Nov. 15, made a special effort over the weekend to get some last minute letters from students at Shawville’s Dr. S. E. McDowell Elementary School sent to Santa Claus in the North Pole.
“Normally on my route the kids put their letters for Santa in the mailbox and we bring them back to the post office,” said Shawville postal driver Kayla Wilson, explaining the letters are then sent up to the North Pole where Santa writes responses and sends them back to the children.
“So this year it kind of sucks for the kids because we’re not out there delivering.”
So in a last minute act of holiday generosity, the postal workers decided to go out of their way to ensure the letters to Santa still made it to him before Christmas.
On Thursday, they picked up letters from 100 or so students at the school, and on Monday morning, they delivered Santa’s hundred or so responses.
The special delivery from the North Pole came only a day before the 55,000 Canada Post employees on strike across the country returned to work, following an intervention from federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon last week.
MacKinnon directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order the employees back to work, ending the month-long strike, if it deemed a new contract deal to be impossible before the end of the year.
Their current contract has been extended until May 2025, at which point the employees will be able to go on strike once again if negotiations don’t produce a new contract by then.
“It’s discouraging,” Wilson said, regarding the news. “We wasted four weeks. If they were going to order us back why didn’t they do it right away, instead of letting us suffer. It feels like it was for nothing.”
Shawville resident Andrew Lang, who works out of the Wolf Lake post office, echoed this frustration.
“It will be very discouraging if by May 22 they don’t have a new contract in place, it won’t be good.”
