Keeping in touch: A brief history of the Norwood post office
It has grown from a small wooden building to a modern facility since opening in 1837
During the current pandemic where social distancing has become a way of life, keeping in touch with one another is one way to try and keep our sanity.
Communication in today’s age of satellites, the internet, cellphones, video chat apps and so on is pretty much taken for granted as images and conversation flow across the globe in an instant.
This was not the case for the early pioneers; to keep in touch with relatives or for business dealings they had to take up pen and paper and write letters that could take months to get to their destination and perhaps months more for a response.
This was the only form of long-distance communications available to the early settlers of Asphodel. (Even the telegraph was in its infancy and didn’t reach this part of the world until the first train tracks were being laid.) It took only 17 years from Birdsall’s survey of the new township in 1820 before the village’s first post office was opened in the year 1837.
The coming of the post office also coincided with the opening of the town’s first store as they shared the same small wood-framed building in the Keeler’s Mill yard.
The store’s proprietor was James Foley and he holds the designation of being the village’s first postmaster and also the second postmaster in all of Asphodel Township. The post office in Westwood opened a short time before Norwood’s.
This early mail service consisted of “a very slim mailbag” received by Foley once each week, coming on horseback from the village of Colborne. A few years later, Foley built and moved his business and the post office to a new larger building just outside of the mill property, and the mail delivery was then stepped up to two trips per week.
In 1845, he moved the post office again, this time into the village to a new stone and brick building on the southeast corner of Colborne and Peterborough Streets. (The Centennial Pharmacy occupies this site today). In subsequent years, the delivery was increased to three times per week, this time coming from Peterborough and also serving the village of Westwood along the way.
In 1863, the mail started daily deliveries to the village, once again coming from Colborne however this time by stagecoach.
It would be many years before the Royal Mail Service stopped using horses to deliver mail to the town; it was not until 1885 when the railway from Toronto to Montreal was completed, before the mail service was switched to the considerably faster delivery service of the train.
Foley continued in the role of postmaster until his death in 1864, he was succeeded by his nephew and business partner John Butterfield who continued in the post until his death in 1886.
Joseph B. Pearce was then appointed to the position. Under his direction, the post office was moved from the former Foley Store to his own block of buildings further south on Colborne Street (approximately where the hardware store is today).
The office remained there until 1898 when a fire destroyed the entire block.
After the block was rebuilt, the post office was moved back.
While Pearce remained the official postmaster until his death in 1923, he placed the day-to-day operations in the hands of several individuals over the years including a James Calder and Calder’s daughter Christine and by 1920 a Miss Helen (Nellie) MacNaughton.
After the death of Pearce, a Wilmer H. Griffen was appointed as postmaster and the office was on the move again, this time to the Roxburgh block a couple of hundred feet up the street, almost to the same spot where the original Foley building was.
This location as it turned out was far too small for the expanding parcel and rural route mail services to operate from and the post office was soon looking for new quarters.
The Norwood branch of the Canadian Bank of Commerce at the time happened to be closing their local branch on Peterborough Street (presently this building is used as a laundry mat).
The former bank building suited the post office’s purposes very well and took over the site shortly after the bank closed. Griffen retired in 1961.
Following Griffen’s retirement, Arnold Lobb was appointed as postmaster and a year later in 1962 the post office moved again, this time to a new building on the southwest corner of Victoria and Peterborough streets.
Lobb held his post until his retirement in the mid 1980s, and was replaced by Beth Haynes; a few years later Barb Althouse would take over and after her retirement in 1991 the position has been filled by a series of others including a Mr. Beamish, Ruth Thompson and Doug Collisum.
Today, Colleen Rodgers has the title of postmaster.
Norwood’s post office remains in the 1962 building today.
It has, of course, been modernized and computerized over the years and continues to serve the public by faithfully delivering those important documents, anticipated parcels, private letters, treasured Christmas and birthday wishes and anything else that needs the personal attention that an email or a telephone call cannot deliver.