Iles retires after 55 years as mail carrier

For the first time in 55 years, Mount Forest’s Maureen Iles is not delivering mail to RR1 customers in Wellington North.

And, for the first time since community mailboxes were installed in Mount Forest 25 years ago, someone else is handling the mail she used to deliver to 554 customers at 19 community boxes.

After a long career, Iles retired at the beginning of February.

Her husband Ken Iles remembers as a child, helping Laura Irwin deliver mail by horse and buggy.  When former mail carrier Mike Burke died over a half century ago, Ken won the contract to deliver mail on the 42-kilometre (26-mile) rural route.

At first Maureen helped her husband deliver mail out Highway 89 to Conn, across Egremont’s Concession 6 and back to town – but it wasn’t long until she took over the job herself.

Back in the day, her now-grown children were her helpers, and her husband tagged along if he was working nights.

“The kids used to ride along and put the mail into the boxes,” Maureen says.

For a while she also had the contract to deliver mailbags from the Mount Forest post office to Kenilworth twice a day – “and that’s how my kids learned to drive.”

She shakes her head at the changes over the years.

When she started the first contract position she was “sworn in,” but that was the extent of it. Today, with mail carriers being actual employees of Canada Post, fingerprints and a criminal record check are required.

No one under the age of 16 is allowed into the post office to help sort the mail, let alone drive along the routes.

“You sure can’t take your kids with you now,” said Maureen.

She delivered mail six days a week when she first started, and had to deliver mailbags for both Conn and Cedarville to the Conn post office – even on Christmas Day, though the mail wasn’t going anywhere. Both post offices closed years ago.

She won one of three contracts to deliver to community mailboxes 25 years ago, and added that to her daily trek along RR1.

“That took a lot more time,” she said. “I certainly don’t miss standing out in the blistering cold and putting mail in the community boxes. If the snow hadn’t been cleared, you had to climb over it to put the mail in the boxes.”

Maureen also doesn’t miss some of the snowy drives along RR1. She recalls one spot on Concession 6 where her vehicle regularly wouldn’t make it up a hill if there was snow. She would get out, walk to Irwin Nelson’s nearby farm, and he would come with his tractor and pull her vehicle up the hill so she could continue with the mail delivery.

She says she had a lot of fun over the years, including  birthday and Christmas celebrations with fellow mail carriers.

Those days ended a number of years ago.

The amount of mail to be delivered also declined drastically over the years; now there are more parcels than letters being delivered.

“At Christmas there used to be so much mail,” said Maureen. “But now there’s hardly any mail at all.”

Noting her customers were “great,” she mentioned one  fellow in particular, a woodworker who surprised her with several handmade gifts over the years.

Mount Forest Postmistress Irene Ash-Livingstone said Maureen “always did an excellent job.”

At the time of her retirement there were seven people delivering mail on 12 routes out of the Mount Forest office, including three community mailbox routes in town.

Ash-Livingstone notes Ken Iles and the couple’s oldest daughter are among those still delivering mail – and at one point a few years ago the Iles’ granddaughter was also responsible for a route.

“There were three generations of the Iles family delivering mail at the time,”  said Ash-Livingstone.

The Iles family is hosting a come-and-go retirement tea for Maureen on March 26 at the Mount Forest library. Former mail customers, friends and family members are invited to drop in between 2 and 4pm to congratulate Maureen.

At the tea she will be presented with a plaque from Canada Post and gifts from co-workers at the post office, Ash-Livingstone said.

 

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