Langdon residents will have to drive to Chestermere or Strathmore in early 2023 if they want to pick up a package or drop off a parcel to mail, as the hamlet is set to lose their local post office at the end of the month.
Residents of the hamlet in southeast Rocky View County have been discussing their post office's uncertain future on a local community Facebook page in recent weeks, after resident Janet Cameron sounded the alarm about the Canada Post branch's impending closure in a post on Dec. 13.
Cameron speculated the loss of the post office after Dec. 30 is related to the ending of the current lease between the landlord of the building at 119-355 Centre Street in Langdon and Canada Post.
She said the local post office has been operating in a sort of limbo for the last six months, following the departure of the post office's previous postmaster, Tracey Cowan.
“To my understanding, they haven’t found a new one yet,” Cameron said. “From what I was reading, it sounds like they did have a posting, and it was just never filled.”
To Cameron's knowledge, she said the postmaster of Langdon's post office is not a Canada Post employee, but rather a contracted position whose responsibilities include ensuring the maintenance and upkeep of the facility.
“The post office in Langdon, where it currently is, has suffered a number of break-ins over the last couple years, and I think those were very costly in terms of having to replace doors, windows, and things like that,” she said.
A resident of Langdon since November 1998, Cameron said that for as long as she's lived in Langdon, the community has had a local post office.
Without a local facility to send or receive parcels and packages in 2023, Langdon residents will have to travel to either Chestermere or Strathmore for their postal services.
“It’s not like you can walk down the street to pick up a parcel,” she said. “And there are a lot of elderly people who have P.O. boxes within the current post office. I’m not sure, but that would be really inconvenient for them. If they’re rural, I’m not sure how they’d manage that.”
Langdon's representative on Rocky View County council is Division 7 Coun. Al Schule. While he admitted he has more questions than answers at the moment, Schule confirmed the hamlet's post office is slated to close on Dec. 30 this year.
Given the hamlet's current size and projected growth – Langdon already has a population above 6,000 people and is set to nearly double in size in the coming decades – Schule said it's ridiculous for a community of Langdon's size to not have its own post office.
“I think Canada Post has to wake up,” he said. “Maybe they don’t understand what the growth of Langdon is going to be. I wish I had more answers.
“We’ve had a post office in Langdon for as long as I’ve been in Langdon, which is probably 35 years, and all of a sudden, we’re getting a big population growth and losing our post office. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
In an emailed statement on Dec. 15, staff from Canada Post told the Rocky View Weekly that they intend to resume Langdon's postal services into 2023, and are in the process of trying to find a new facility to lease in the hamlet.
“We have been operating the Langdon Post Office with temporary staff as we have been without a full-time postmaster since the departure of the previous one,” wrote Canada Post media relations representative Phil Rogers in an email.
“We are in the process of putting plans in place to maintain regular and uninterrupted postal services in Langdon after December 30, once we vacate the current location at 119-355 Centre Street. We have been in communication with local elected officials to keep them updated on our plans.
“We will provide updates to our customers as soon as they become available and if we do have to put temporary measures in place.”
Rogers concluded the statement by thanking Langdonites for their patience and understanding, and stating that if they have questions regarding their postal services, to contact Canada Post's customer service team online at canadapost.ca/support or by calling 1-866-607-6301 (TTY: 1-800-267-2797).
Cameron said she encourages Langdon residents who do not want to see the closure of their post office reach out to Canada Post, as well as their political representatives.
“People have been responding by saying, ‘Oh my god, what are we going to do?’ People should contact the MLA and Canada Post to raise our concerns, as well as take them to our [councillor] Al Schule,” she said.
