We learned, twenty-two years ago when we first took possession of our then-new house that we would no longer be honoured to receive daily mail delivery at our front door. Henceforth, we would have to become accustomed to walking up the street to a large compartmented mailbox arrangement that Canada Post had designed to accustom people to the fact that its mail delivery stratagem had undergone a significant change.

We've long since become accustomed to it. And now, Canada Post Corporation surprised everyone by announcing yesterday that the group post-boxes will become the norm. Inner-city areas that had for a century been the recipients of door-to-door mail delivery, come rain or shine, sleet or hurricane, would be coming to an end.

Our daughter, who lives with our granddaughter in a converted 1864 log home that was once a rural area schoolhouse, like her rustic neighbours living on their country acreage, will continue to have mail delivered to their roadside mailboxes by contracted truck-driving mail deliverers.

The geographic differences in our homes is not entirely convenient. We went swiftly from seeing our daughter and granddaughter daily while through the first nine years of our granddaughter's life, we were her daily care-givers, to seeing them far less frequently. If we mail a letter or parcel to them from where we live, from a postal outlet, they can receive that missive or packet a day later, two days at most. If we send a letter to our son in Toronto or our son in Vancouver, it will take a week for delivery. Not very efficient for a service that once boasted it could deliver coast-to-coast in a matter of days.

Taking advantage of the instantaneous character of the Internet is far more immediate, much like using the telephone. The postal service upon which we so depended to keep ourselves in contact and communication with meaningful people in our lives, let alone for business-related reasons, has fallen on hard times. As an institution delivering a service there are other, competing services that are far more efficient. We can bank and pay all our bills on line. We can donate to charities on line.

If our granddaughter has a list of books she's interested in, I can go on line and have Amazon deliver them in several days' time, out-competing Canada Post by a wide margin. If I ask our granddaughter what she might like for a gift for Chanukah she can herself go on line and do some shopping then send me the link to evaluate her choice -- upon which we discuss options, agree on a mutually satisfactory solution to the dilemma of !which one?!, and the gift will be ordered and delivered in swift order.

So sad, too bad, Canada Post.