WESTLOCK – Jarvie residents’ efforts to save their post office have paid off.
A representative from Canada Post attended Jarvie’s council meeting earlier this month and notified them that postal service will return to Jarvie.
“It’s very good news,” president of Jarvie Community Council John Tyrell said on Oct. 16.
“It’s very important to have a post office here. We actually have quite a volume here, especially packages. The folks around this area seem to order a lot of stuff in. And we have a few local businesses that send out quite a bit of mail.”
On Oct. 17, Jarvie resident Chuck Desranleau, who owns the Jarvie General Store, welcomed the news that postal service is returning to the hamlet.
“Everyone is so used to getting it here and all of a sudden it changes. It was so fluky, the spare [postmaster] retired exactly the same time the [main postmaster] quit.”
Another Jarvie resident, Doug Desranleau, said no mail has been delivered to Jarvie since mid-August.
Desranleau explained that for the past three years, Jarvie residents have been getting their mail at the community centre after the Jarvie General Store, which housed the community post office, burned down in June 2020.
The new Jarvie General Store opened only three months ago, said Desranleau. But the new postal boxes in the store were installed approximately a year ago when the store was under construction. The postal service was expected to transition from the plastic bins at the community centre to the installed steel boxes at the Jarvie General Store after it opened.
But the post office boxes now sit idle and have never been used. Desranleau said he and Canada Post worked together to install the boxes.
He added that Canada Post had approached him and asked if residents of the hamlet would want their postal service restored.
“I said, ‘I can pretty well speak for everybody, we want it back.’”
Tyrell said Canada Post has opened up a competition for the postmaster position in Jarvie, which closes on Nov. 4.
“We are going to have postal service again under the same arrangement we had before,” said Tyrell. “We don’t know where it will be because that’s up to whoever is accepted as postmaster.”
Desranleau said he has put in an application to be the new postmaster, adding that it only makes sense because he already has the postal boxes installed in his store.
He also praised Westlock County Reeve Christine Wiese’s efforts to save Jarvie’s post office.
“She helped us a lot,” he said.
Westlock County Division 2 Coun. Jared Stitsen said Busby, another hamlet in Westlock County, had encountered a similar problem. Last year the Busby Community League called an emergency meeting to save its postal service. They unanimously decided to renovate a portion of the hall to use as the post office.
Stitsen praised Jarvie’s efforts to keep their post office going.
“Jarvie tried to hold on to it. Good for them.”
