Daily BrewB.C. woman says Canada Post threatened her with jail for posting bottle-drive notice
If you get your mail via one of those community mailboxes, you can rest easy. Posting a notice on it for your lost cat or to sell a surplus bicycle will not trigger a visit from the Canada Post mailbox police.
The so-called super boxes have been common for a couple of decades as Canada Post opted not to introduce home delivery to newer subdivisions. Sometimes the sides become impromptu community bulletin boards.
Rose McCulley of Chase River, near Nanaimo, B.C., found out the hard way that the national postal service forbids people from sticking up notices on community mailboxes when she used one to advertise a fundraiser.
McCulley said she was threatened with fines and even jail by a Canada Post employee after one of her volunteers put up a poster for a school bottle drive, the Nanaimo Daily News reports.
A supervisor apparently also told McCulley her name had been placed on a national database of mailbox vandals.
"The supervisor said that my name has already been entered in the database as defacing federal property," McCulley told the Daily News. "Then she said that Canada Post has put moms in jail for what we've done."
But now Canada Post is denying such a blacklist exists. There is no vandal database and the service has no authority to fine, much less jail, someone for posting flyers and advertisements on super boxes.
McCulley filed a complaint alleging the supervisor had bullied her. Canada Post spokeswoman Anick Losier said if that's true, she is owed an apology.
But none of Canada Post's supervisors can remember talking with McCulley, she said.
"So we're just trying to figure out who she spoke to," Losier told the Daily News. "Our supervisors are now talking to their employees and seeing if anybody may have spoken to them. Maybe a letter carrier was there when she was putting (the sign) up. We don't know.
"We hope it's not one of our people because this is not how we want our people to treat our customers."
McCulley said she was called by a woman who identified herself as a supervisor and that her name had been added to a list of mailbox vandals. The "supervisor" said Canada Post had gotten people jailed for posting notices on super boxes.
"My mother was literally scared," said her daughter, Bobbie Buckle, who helped her file the complaint. "She doesn't do anything illegal. She does nothing but help the community.
"She gives so much of herself, and then she gets threatened . . . by something as stupid as this?"
