Small community wants mail delivered by rail from Sudbury

Residents of a small rural community north of Sudbury are frustrated they must travel two hours to pick up their mail after changes made by Canada Post last fall.

Biscotasing, also referred to as Bisco, is located in the unorganized north part of the Sudbury District, about a three-hour drive north of Greater Sudbury. Until October 2023, residents collected their mail from a postal box within their community.

In the summer of 2023, Canada Post announced it was terminating road delivery to Biscotasing over safety concerns. Instead, residents would have to pick up their mail at a postal box located outside the Watershed Restaurant along Highway 144 in Gogama, about an hour’s drive away, along a gravel road.

Residents were told that the delivery service was terminated over safety concerns for the Canada Post driver along Sultan Industrial Road, a logging road maintained by both the province and Eacom Timber Corporation. Northern Ontario mayors have lobbied the province for decades for the road to become a provincial highway.

Ray Hatfield has called Biscotasing home since the 1950s — the property has been in his family for five generations. A member of Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation, Hatfield is retired, like many members in his community.

“This is unfair,” he said. “It is more than the Canada Post service that is broken, it is our faith that a historically proud community can be treated in such an unfair and humiliating manner.”

Hatfield said that during the 1950s and before the development of the public access road to Biscotasing, Canada Post delivered mail to the community by the CPR rail service from Sudbury. The mailbag was dropped off at the train station in Biscotasing and upon return, the train would pick up the outgoing mail, which was transported to the Sudbury Post Office.

However, with the public access road open to Biscotasing from Highway 144 in the 1960s, Canada Post terminated the rail delivery and service was transferred to road delivery directly into Biscotasing.

In addition to the two-hour round trip now required to pick up mail, Hatfield said increased vehicle use is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and adding to the wear and tear of residents’ vehicles. With the increase in fuel prices expected from the carbon tax, residents will have to pay higher fuel costs at “remote Northern Ontario prices,” he added.

Hatfield is chair of the board of directors of the Biscotasing Citizens Committee Corporation. On behalf of the board, he reached out to Nickel Belt MP Marc Serre in October 2023 to share the community’s frustrations and to try setting up a meeting with a Canada Post official to discuss cost-effective solutions. The group is also upset their postal box in the new pick-up location was vandalized, prompting Canada Post to set up video surveillance, Hatfield said.

Hatfield said residents are willing to work with Canada Post to come up with a solution. However, they haven’t had much luck connecting with the Crown corporation.

Still, the group of residents has outlined some options they say will improve mail delivery and pick-up for both parties.

The residents suggest they be exempt from the carbon tax as they have to purchase extra fuel to pick up their mail. They also want Canada Post to consider contracting a resident to pick up mail on behalf of the community. This contractor would drive to pick up the mail and then re-distribute it to the community.

Further, the group suggests using a drone or even reinstating the historical mail delivery and pickup by train.

When contacted by The Sudbury Star, Canada Post reiterated the reasoning behind its decision to change the delivery route due to “safety reasons beyond our control.”

“Prior to the relocation, the community mailboxes were only accessible by a privately managed, unpaved road with ongoing logging operations,” Lisa Liu, a media spokesperson for Canada Post, said in an email. “Unfortunately, our delivery agents have encountered significant health and safety issues beyond their control on this road leading into the community, including broken windshields due to flying debris, flat tires and being forced off the road by oncoming logging vehicles.

“After reviewing and determining the delivery route deemed a significant health and safety risk to our employees, we communicated to the community the relocation of the community mailboxes to a convenient location where the majority of Biscotasing residents conduct other business such as buying groceries or gas.”

Liu said mail is being delivered to the new site three days a week and service will be more reliable as items destined for Biscotasing will now be delivered out of Shining Tree (about 35 minutes away) instead of Chapleau (about 3.5 hours away), “whereas before, mail delivery on these days was less reliable due to inclement weather, and most importantly the conditions of the road leading into the community.”

The Local Journalism Initiative is made possible through funding from the federal government.

[email protected]

X: @SudburyStar

Laura Stradiotto, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Sudbury Star