One Canadian man’s fight to keep his mailbox

For the last 19 days, Henry Evans-Tenbrinke has been holding a sit-in.

The Canadian retiree has been sitting in a lawn chair on his street to protest over changes to his mail delivery service.

With just his lawn chair — and sometimes his dog Albert — 60-year-old Evans-Tenbrinke is making a stand against the decision by Canada's postal service to phase out home mail delivery.

For eight hours a day, he sits at the proposed site of a Canada Post community mailbox, several blocks from his home. “The protest is about the fact that Canada Post is running roughshod over Canadians,” says Evans-Tenbrinke. “They are not consulting with Canadians over the mailboxes. Plus, they’re not taking into account the effect it’s going to have on seniors and people with disabilities and that’s our main concern.”

Canada’s national mail service says rising costs and falling mail volumes have made it impossible to continue its traditional operations. It says only about one-third of Canadians are still getting home delivery — the rest will collect mail from the large community mailboxes.

But Evans-Tenbrinke argues that there is still a need for home delivery. “People are still using mail. Canada Post is the leading deliverer of parcels, I mean, I know people are ordering stuff on the Internet now and it’s Canada Post that is the primary deliverer.”

And Evans-Tenbrinke says he has no intentions of moving from the site of the new community mailbox. He says he plans to stay “as long as necessary.”