Here in Toronto, City of Unintended Consequences, the sidewalks are choked with any number of obstacles, everything from pedestrian billboards and newspaper boxes to light standards, utility poles, bus shelters and garbage bins junkier than the trash they contain.

Now that Canada Post has announced the end of home delivery is at hand, our already busy walkways could well be cluttered with even more stuff.

In the rush to rid itself of the burden of putting envelopes through doors, many expect the post office is very likely to opt to drop off the mail at receptacles conveniently located on sidewalk corners across Toronto.

How the good burghers of Toronto will respond remains to be seen, but chances are they won’t be happy. Indeed, if history tells us anything, it is that this is a cause that will arouse the NIMBY hordes to unprecedented outrage.

And so it should.

More at thestar.com:

Canada Post announces end to door-to-door delivery

Canada Post: A timeline

5 key changes you need to know

Though we have yet to hear the specifics of Canada Post’s plans, it is not known as a hotbed of forward thinking and innovation. Chances are it will want to do what it has been doing forever in the suburbs, namely put up large metal structures filled with individual mailboxes where they’re most accessible and leave it up to the neighbourhood to deal with the mess. Lost among the blight of sprawl, one thing looks much like any other.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

In more urban areas, the situation is different. For one thing, our 19th {+ } century forbearers who built the city weren’t as anxious to squander space in the same way we have in the post-war period. Their Toronto was a tight, compact community where proximity was more important than mobility.

Today, by contrast, the (false) assumption of mobility has led to the notion that people will simply drive wherever they need to go, including the corner mail container.

But what Canada Post will quickly discover is that there’s nowhere to put their equipment. The sidewalks simply aren’t big enough and, as mentioned, they’re already chock-a-block with various bits and pieces. Besides, the house-proud residents of Cabbagetown, the Annex, Rosedale, Riverdale, the Beach, Forest Hill, Moore Park, etc., etc., won’t take kindly to having their well-tended sidewalks become part of a suburban mail-delivery system.

There was a time when Toronto Hydro would construct actual houses to disguise sub-stations when they had to be in residential neighbourhoods. Unless you looked closely, it was hard to tell the fake home from the real thing. No one would seriously expect Canada Post to treat the city with such delicacy.

Perhaps local cafes and convenience stores can be coerced into putting aside an inside wall for mailboxes. Maybe it could be the nearest supermarket, library, drugstore, LCBO….

For years, it seems most post offices have been stuck in the back of some Shoppers Drug Mart or other. Who knows, perhaps at this point the chain could just take over Canada Post once and for all.

Virtually anything would be preferable to intruding on our sidewalks with more things that don’t belong or should be somewhere else.

Unlike Torontonians, however, official Toronto has little appreciation of sidewalks. For example, when Bloor St. was cleaned up, trees planted and granite paving added, it was business that paid; not only did the city not help, it actively made the process much more onerous than it needed to be.

For obvious reasons, no one would even think of allowing Canada Post to put its boxes on city streets. But sidewalks are as important to pedestrians as roads are to drivers, no matter how special the delivery.

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca

Read more about: