Has anyone ever thought how the first immigrants to our area kept in touch with their relatives “back home?”
After I moved here, I met the only other Culbert on the island. He was originally from Massachusetts but came here with his family, married a girl from here and stayed. He told me when his forefathers came here (five brothers), they arrived in Halifax, said goodbye and struck out across America.
Bill Marks tells us that in the 17th and 18th centuries, the mail between France and the colonies was dependent on wind, weather, and current in the North Atlantic. Once they arrived in Canada, they had the St. Lawrence Valley to contend with until the winter thawed out. Riverboat owners usually opened the mail along the way. Then, in July 1732, ship captains were ordered to deliver their charge of mail to an appointed place on land in order to guarantee the confidentiality of the correspondence.
About the same time that settlers were coming to West Gwillimbury, mail contracts issued by the deputy postmaster general helped the establishment of stagecoach lines along the routes between Upper and Lower Canada and to local establishments.
In 1837, the first post office for the village of Bond Head was set up in a new general store run by Joel Flesher Robinson, and the Bradford post office was opened in 1840. The first postmaster was John Peacock and the building housing the post office was on the northwest corner of Barrie and Holland streets.
Now the settlers could send mail back home and let their families know they were safe and where they were living. Such was the start of communications between Bradford and the homeland.
The mail would usually arrive via stagecoach to outlying post offices and the country folk would have to walk or ride horses to the village to get their mail. Henry Green ran the stagecoach between Bradford, Bond Head and Cookstown.
In 1861, the Bradford Chronicle newspaper carried the Northern Railway of Canada mail train schedule. The steamer Emily May delivered mail around Lake Simcoe and connected via train to Collingwood. The Bradford Chronicle also listed the names of people who had mail in the village post office. When in the village for supplies, they could get their mail.
Years later, Jack Cook owned the stage between Bond Head and Bradford. Charles Melbourne, who farmed on the 6th concession of West Gwillimbury (northeast corner of 6th Concession and 10th Sideroad), worked for Cook and, in 1907, he bought the coach line business.
Rural mail delivery started in Canada in 1908 and in West Gwillimbury in the 1914-16 period. In Bradford, it started in 1916. The mailman would use horse and buggy in summer and horse and sleigh or cutter in winter. In 1920, Melbourne took over RR 1 from Frank Ritchie. Unlike today’s mail delivery, the motto was, “The mail had to get through.” You would see Melbourne out with his horse and bag of mail in all kinds of weather. There was never the excuse that it was too wet or too much snow, like it is today.
As Melbourne started to slow down due to age, he hired Bus Culbert (my father) to do the mail route. My father would tell us stories of the route. In the winter, if it was really storming, he would cut through either the Lloyd or McNair farm from the 5th Concession to the 4th Concession to deliver mail to the McDonald farm. He would stop at the house and take the mail up to the house.
The farm was owned by John and Elizabeth and they had seven girls and no boys — Letitia Adeline (1869-72), Jannet Anne (1871 to 1952), Mary Dollena (1873 to 1945), Elizabeth Christina (1875 to 1959), Barbara Florence (1877-79), Florence Isabella (1879-80), and Ada Levina (1881 to 1966). After their parents died, the four sisters ran the farm. Two girls were farm girls and two were housekeepers.
No matter what the day was like, in the winter, the girls would have hot biscuits and jam and a cup of something warm for Dad before he went out to finish the mail route. The girls were getting up in years by then and had a hired man by the name of Percy Steptoe. They were hard workers, and the last surviving girl was a farm girl (Ada), who really didn’t know how to cook, so she and the hired man ate sparingly. The farm was sold when Ada died. I was fortunate to be able to go to the auction sale. My dad was the clerk for the auctioneer. They lived a meagre life. A couple of 25-watt bulbs hung from the ceiling and there were not many more amenities, but they farmed well, were content and left their estate to the upkeep of the Second West Gwillimbury Church for maintenance of the graveyard. Steptoe moved to Jim Murihead’s for a time, and then moved on.
Another story Dad would tell us with a laugh and a twinkle in his eye was in winter, before Mom and Dad were married, Mom would accompany Dad on the route and, wrapped up in the old buffalo robe with the heated soapstone at their feet, Dad would get Mom to get out to put the mail in the box. Sometimes there was ice at the mailbox and Mom would slip and fall and Dad would have a great laugh.
After Melbourne retired in 1946, RR 1 remained in the Melbourne name with Bill, Jock, Carl and his wife, Ruth, taking their turn running the route. When I was a youngster, Ruth was the mail carrier, and if you were out of a stamp, you left the letter in the box with some money and she would look after it for you. We used to go down when we had an idea Ruth was coming and have a chat with her. The mail carriers of the day would go out of their way to help, and when Ruth got to the McDonalds’ box, on certain days, she would find the girls’ shopping list and she would do their shopping for them and deliver it to the door the next day. Can you imagine that happening today?
The Melbourne family retired from the mail business in the 1960s and Maurice Roberts took over the route. His wife took it over when Maurice got the new route RR 4 to the marsh. They kept the routes until 1984.
The mail routes to the north were divided into RR 2 and RR 3. In the early 1930s, Jack Gidney would deliver the mail for RR 2 in a Model A Ford, and if the snow was too deep, he would hitch the horse and sleigh that was kept in a stable behind the Queen’s Hotel. Try suggesting that to the mail carriers of today. Jack died in 1959, and Graham and Dorothy Matthews took over the route.
RR 3 had numerous names attached to the route.
In 1936, the post office got a new location on Barrie Street and was there until it was moved to the present location on the northwest corner of John and Barrie streets.
Now Canada Post is trying to stop rural delivery to each laneway and installing super boxes at dedicated locations. Gone is the day of receiving a parcel at the door or giving the postman/lady your grocery list, and if there is a storm, you can be guaranteed you will not get any mail until your drive is cleared in front of the box. If the snow plow throws your mailbox into the field, good luck getting the mail until spring.
Now you know a little history of mail delivery in West Gwillimbury.
