by Howard MoscoeLast year Canada Post announced that it will be discontinuing door to door mail service, and it has been true to its word. Within the next two weeks, the conversion to community mail boxes will begin at 18 or 19 locations across the country with door to door service withdrawn from some 26,000 homes. In Ontario, Oakville will be the first city hit. The communities affected so far, have been targeted as easier hits because some of the population in these locations have already been serviced by community mail boxes. The date when we will lose our door to door service in Downsview has not yet been determined, but it will be gone by 2019. My letter carrier suggested that it will likely be out of service within about two years. The post office has whined about operating losses as the reason for cutting service and along with that, the need to cut 8,000 jobs. That now rings hollow because in the second quarter of 2014 Canada Post made a net profit of $67 million, up from a loss of $50 million the year before. Last month, I walked over to the letter box at the corner of Catford Rd., and Derrydown Rd., to post a letter. The box was gone. I then hoofed it over to the next closest letter box to my house, on Hucknall Rd., near Madron Cres., and that box was also missing. It would appear that not only is Canada Post cutting back on door to door delivery of mail, they are also cutting back on mail box locations. Those two boxes have been in place for some 50 years. So now that I’m a senior, I can not walk to post a letter, but must drive. What about those seniors who can’t drive?I contacted Canada Post to ask about other mail boxes that have been taken out of service in Downsview. John Hamilton, a spokesman for Canada Post said that the organization doesn't keep any data on specific communities.“Any mail induction point has to be visited and cleared five days a week,” Hamilton said. “While the number of street letter boxes has remained relatively constant we have moved or removed some that were being used infrequently.” He then went on about how Canada Post was losing money and the need for efficiencies to be created at the local level. Here is what I don’t understand. If each of the new community mail boxes has a slot that will accept outgoing mail, one wonders why they couldn’t simply wait until the community mailboxes were installed before they began to pull existing letter boxes out of service? If you have noticed a letter box missing in your area, email me the location. (hmoscoe@gmail.com). Hamilton said that anyone who thinks Canada Post has overlooked important information when making the decision to remove the mailboxes can call customer service at 1-866-607-6301 and they will look into it.If you decide to complain, be prepared to wait a long time on the telephone and push a lot of buttons to get to talk to a real person. Be persistent, and if you are successful in getting a box put back in our neighbourhood, let us know so we can celebrate your success. The Canada Post Corporation Act in 1981, which separated the postal service from the Canadian Government, was supposed to guarantee basic postal service to every Canadian wherever they might live. The problem is that it failed to clearly define what basic meant.