Feud Watch: Josh Matlow versus community mailboxes
The city councillor is coming for big, ugly street furniture
Josh Matlow has taken on privatized snow ploughs, garbage and bad food in city parks. Now, the city councillor is wading into the current battle between Canada Post and its employees. Last week, the national mail carrier announced its plan to replace door-to-door delivery with community mailboxes—promptly causing postal workers to strike. Matlow says he wants the city to “think carefully” about the plan to implement community mailboxes on the streets of Toronto.
Related: Canada Post may soon stop delivering to your door
It’s true that 75 per cent of Canadians already receive their mail via this method (which explains the “Get over yourselves, big-city crybabies” sentiment that has emerged from some corners of the internet). It’s also true that, per Matlow’s description, community mailboxes are “massive, massive structures, compared to much of the street furniture,” and installing them will certainly pose a different set of problems at Yonge and Eglinton than it would in a rural community.
Matlow claims that his motion is not about whether Canada Post should go through with its plan to install between 2,500 and 11,000 community mailbox hubs in Toronto (each about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle). Rather, he told CP24, he wants to ensure that the installation of the XL mailboxes is carefully considered given that it would interfere with everything from snow removal to trash collection to fire safety to accessibility to “just the mere aesthetics.” (Translation: they’re super ugly.)
The motion will go to council next week, where it will be debated and voted on.
Courtney Shea is a freelance journalist in Toronto. She started her career as an intern at Toronto Life and continues to contribute frequently to the publication, including her 2022 National Magazine Award–winning feature, “The Death Cheaters,” her regular Q&As and her recent investigation into whether Taylor Swift hung out at a Toronto dive bar (she did not). Courtney was a producer and writer on the 2022 documentary The Talented Mr. Rosenberg, based on her 2014 Toronto Life magazine feature “The Yorkville Swindler.”
