This week’s column concludes the series on four Wellington County post offices built in 1911. Work on all four of the new Wellington County post offices that had been authorized in 1908 got under way in the spring of 1911 after the letting of tenders by the Department of Public Works.
A contractor named Whalen secured the work at Elora and Fergus. For Mount Forest and Harriston a man named Proctor was the low bidder. It appears that neither firm was local. Both relied heavily on subcontractors. Proctor and representatives of his masonry subcontractor, Macdonald & George, were in Mount Forest at the end of April to lay out the site and drive stakes for the excavation work. A week later they had a gang of men and some powered equipment digging out the basement. The foundation would be stone, resting on a footing of concrete. Work at Harriston followed a similar schedule.
Part of the reason for the new offices was to provide space for rural route carriers. Wellington North MP Alex Martin, who had been a vocal advocate of improved postal service for years, pushed for the start of rural routes in his riding. A new government policy called for the immediate start of rural routes when 50% of the potential customers petitioned for them. Martin helped circulate petitions. The first rural route in the area began in July 1911, and many others followed during the following months.
Though William Mulock had tried to put the post office on a business footing during his term as postmaster general from 1896 to 1905, he never succeeded in removing political considerations. One member of Mount Forest council tried to claim credit for persuading the government to include a clock tower in the new building. His boast was nonsense: a clock tower was an integral part of the standard design.
A Conservative, the councillor was attempting to undermine Liberal MP Alex Martin, who constantly boasted that he was responsible for both the Mount Forest and Harriston buildings. Martin, as well, was stretching the truth: postal officials wanted proper buildings in all towns doing $3,500 of business or better per year.
Figures for the year to March 31, 1911 revealed that Mount Forest was the busiest office in Wellington outside Guelph, with an income of $4,951. Fergus was only $2 behind, and Harriston not far behind at $4,849. Elora was a tier behind, at $3,751, followed by Palmerston at $3,363, and Arthur well below that at $2,682.
When Wilfrid Laurier called a snap election that fall, Martin used the postal improvements as the central part of his platform. To the surprise of many, he lost his seat by the narrow margin of 16 votes. The winner, Conservative W.A. Clarke, of Palmerston, pushed to have a new post office built in his home town. The building there, built to a slightly different style than the other four new structures in Wellington, opened in 1915.
Construction of the shells of the Harriston and Mount Forest buildings proceeded quickly during the summer of 1911. By Labour Day most of the brickwork was completed. The Fergus and Elora offices, both faced with Credit Valley stone, were at a similar state of progress. Though clocks were specified for both buildings, government officials debated whether they should be installed due to the expense. In the end, all four offices received them.
Interestingly, the local postmasters had a voice in the layout of the working portion of the inside offices. Postmaster Smith received blueprints in September of 1911. Officials at Ottawa accepted all his recommendations in late October. Presumably, they recognized that local postmasters were the best qualified to organize the work in their offices most efficiently.
The federal Conservatives, under Robert Borden, were much more inclined to use the post office as a patronage vehicle than the Liberals had been. There was outrage in the area over the arbitrary removal of a number of postmasters in the spring of 1912, among them Orangeville and Chesley. Wellington County postmasters seem to have escaped the axe, but in an economy move, the post office cut back on some of the mail service on trains.
That meant, for example, the residents of north Wellington would not receive the morning Toronto papers until the evening. But the new government did not touch the system of rural routes, which was hugely popular among farmers.
Like the Elora and Fergus buildings, the Mount Forest and Harriston post offices began serving the public without ceremony in the spring of 1912. All four served for their first 35 years with no changes or alterations.
Fergus was the first office to be changed, with a large addition to the rear of the building in the late 1940s. The Mount Forest and Harriston offices remained unaltered for another decade. In 1958, there were major renovations to Mount Forest’s office, completed by contractor Roger McEachern. The work included new wickets and lighting, and expansion of the lock box section from 300 to 468 boxes.
Another 125 boxes were added in 1967. Also of note was the replacement of fountain pens for the use of the public with ball point pens in 1961 and 1962. The old fountain pens had been the subject of countless jokes and complaints over the years.
In August 1969, the post office experimented with 24-hour access to the lock boxes. The move was popular with many customers, but it ended in all offices within six years, due to vandalism.
Beginning in the mid 1960s the post office began to consider the replacement of the 1912-era buildings. Maintenance of them was expensive, and all would soon require major renovation. Another problem, with the exception of Fergus, was access by the large trucks that had replaced the railway mail cars in the late 1950s. Access to the loading docks was awkward and inconvenient at Mount Forest, Harriston, and Elora.
Postal officials announced plans to replace the Elora office in 1966. The public reaction, to the surprise of officials, was almost uniformly hostile. The issue remained a lively one into the 1970s, when officials accepted the plans of an Elora architect to build an unobtrusive addition to the rear of the building, and renovate the 1912 portion. That work was completed in 1975. As recently as 1990 the post office had closure of the Elora office under active consideration.
Postal officials had more success in replacing the Harriston and Mount Forest buildings. They advised Mount Forest council in 1972 that they were seeking a site for a new building. Mount Forest’s council became involved in the issue, and after two years of negotiations, they hammered out a trade: the old town hall for the post office. Council would relocate to the post office, and the post office would demolish the old town hall and build on the site.
Both the Harriston and Mount Forest post offices remain as prominent main street buildings, but are used for other purposes.