The Iqaluit Post Office

There is no home postal delivery service in Iqaluit, so all mail must be picked up at the post office. Until recently, there wasn't enough post office boxes, so many people had their address simply as General Delivery, Iqaluit.

The Iqaluit Post office has been a focal point for the last couple of weeks, with all of the Christmas cards and packages that have been sent up to family and friends that live here. I was talking to one of the post office employees and he was saying that the Iqaluit Post Office should have 7 full time employees and there are only 4 at this time. Needless to say, the staff have worked very hard and put in many long hours to ensure that as many packages as possible were received by all of the families looking for Christmas Presents from their relatives and friends. The post office was even open on Saturday, December 24th (Christmas Eve)to process as many parcels as possible before Christmas. In fact Jacquie and I picked up 2 parcels on Christmas Eve that helped make our Christmas. The Iqaluit Post Office is not normally open on Saturday, so we thank the staff that worked Christmas Eve to help make many Christmas's including ours a little better.

The shortage of staff, may also explain why at lunch hour, when the post office seems the busiest there is only one clerk on duty, making waiting in line exacerbatingly long! We have waited over 15 minutes in line on a couple of ocassions and other times actually gave up waiting altogether.

One thing that J and I did notice is that the Post Office itself take on the persona of being a positive community gathering place, especially prior to Christmas, since everyone in town must go there to pick up their mail. You get friends, neighbours and aquaintances greeting and chatting with each other, with big smiles on their faces.

Jacquie and I were lucky to get a post office Box a few days after we moved to Iqaluit. The Post Office had just opened an annex, out back that houses another whack of post office boxes. These are separate from the main post office boxes, that are accessed through the front doors. It's hard to say exactly how many post office boxes the Iqaluit Post Office has, however if I were to guess I'd say 2500 - 4000 boxes.

You do hear some grumbling about the Iqaluit post office. Things like the wait times are too long, they are inefficient and sometimes have a hard time finding letters and parcels. However, other than waiting in line for extended periods of time, our experiences have been quite positive. We had friends and a family member post parcels on Friday December 16th and they both made it here before Christmas, which we thought was amazing. We have also found the staff pleasent and accomodating.

Jacquie and I pick our mail up 2 to 3 times per week and have got into a routine of going prior to lunch at 11:45ish to beat the rush making the mail pick-up experience less time consuming and actually quite pleasent. We are always exited to see what the post man has broght us!!