‘Guerrilla gardener’ angered by proposed Canada Post’s community mailbox location
OTTAWA — If Canada Post gets its way, Marymay Downing will be all but surrounded by community mailboxes.
Downing, 64, lives in the end unit of a townhouse complex in Ottawa’s Carlington neighbourhood. Canada Post has started installation of a community mailbox right beside her unit that will serve the 24 townhouses built on the large property.
But that’s not what has Downing, a retired social scientist, so “horribly upset.”
Rather, it’s the larger community mailbox slated to be built on city-owned property at the entrance to the development — behind her unit and in front of her beloved garden — that has her contemplating civil disobedience. That community mailbox is to serve 48 nearby households.
“I don’t know what to do,” Downing said. “I’m thinking of going out and parking myself on top of my garden. I just want to stop this.”
Already, Downing, who describes herself as a guerrilla gardener, has heaped topsoil onto the spot that Canada Post has marked for construction of the new community mailbox. She has planted the soil with squash, dill, cosmos, nicotiana and aster. She has rallied her townhouse neighbours to keep a car parked on the street in front of the yard, which she has tended for two decades.
“It means my 20-year effort to build these gardens is going to be completely destroyed by people invading that space to get their mail,” she said.
Downing has asked Canada Post to find another site, but her overtures have been rejected.
Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton said “We have to go neighbourhood by neighbourhood and find out what works best for that neighbourhood.”
In this case, he said, the site is conveniently located for local residents. Canada Post has considered alternatives, Hamilton said, but has come to the conclusion that “this is the best site.”