Postcard Memories is a weekly series of historic postcard views and photos submitted by Marcel Rousseau.
Some were previously published by the Orillia Museum of Art and History and in the book Postcard Memories Orillia.
In 1932, the post office was located at 30 Peter St. S., where the Orillia Museum of Art and History is now located.
Built in 1894 by the federal government and expanded by Orillia contractor E. Webb in 1914, the building is still a landmark in downtown Orillia with its prominent clock face tower.
Standing in front of the building in this 1932 photo is the first crew of letter carriers hired to provide home delivery. There was no home delivery until that time.
The 1,200 letter boxes along the front and south side of the main lobby as well as three wickets with ample space between permitted easy access for area residents to pick up their mail.
This crew of letter carriers walked the town delivering mail twice a day, six days a week. If Christmas fell on a work day it was mail delivery as usual. Many a resident would invite the postman in for a bit of Christmas cheer and it would be late in the day before the light-footed carrier made it back to the office.
This level of service continued until the late 1940s when delivery was cut back to once a day. Six-day residential delivery ended in the late 1950s but the downtown businesses continued to enjoy twice-a-day delivery into the 1960s.
In the photo are, from left: John Clark, Arthur Groves, Mel Robbins, Edward Sykes, Percy Woodley, Lorne Engeland, William Greer, Clifford Ironside, John Seager, William Dimaline and postmaster Gord Thomson.
Engeland and Groves were inside workers and Thompson was the postmaster during renovations in 1914. Gord Thomson passed away a few years after this photo was taken.
