Tucked away next to the old Whonnock Red-and-White gen-eral store, down on River Road at the foot of 272nd Street, sits a tiny wooden building, barely

bigger than a typical one-car garage. Half-obscured by rhododendrons, with ample parking for two, maybe three vehicles on the paved shoulder, the Whonnock Post Of-fi ce services some 2,000 addresses between 240th Street and the Mission border, and has linked the rural communities of Whon-nock, Albion, Ruskin, and Stave Falls with the outside world for more than a century.

A small red sign that simply reads “Whonnock” is attached to the side of the store next door, betraying the post offi ce’s location. There is little else to distinguish it from a garden shed on the side of the road.

Business is unhurried this summer after-noon, as most things are in Whonnock. Ev-ery few minutes another car pulls up, and another customer walks up the concrete steps into the post offi ce. There’s room for maybe four or fi ve customers at a time, and come Christmas there’s often a line out the door, says postmaster Sue Schulze.

But despite its size, the post offi ce offers every service the much larger outlets do.

“Hallo, Sue,” an elderly gentleman calls out upon entering the post offi ce. He’s here to pick up his mail from one of the 180 post offi ce boxes on site, as many Whonnockians opt to do, rather than have it delivered to their homes.

“It cuts down on fraud,” says Britta Ced-erberg, who’s been coming to the post offi ce since she moved to Whonnock in the 1970s. “It’s here, its secure and Sue knows us. We don’t have to worry about it being stolen.”

In rural Whonnock, where many homes are built on acreages set far back from the main roads, some mailboxes are 100 metres from front doors – easy pickings for some-one looking to steal mail.

“Sue takes care of us,” says Cederberg.For some, picking up their mail them-

selves is just an excuse to trundle down and have a chat.

“You come down here every day and you get to run into people and see what they’re up to,” says Holly Long, who was born and raised in nearby Stave Falls. “It’s the centre of life around here.”

So it has been since the post offi ce fi rst opened for business in 1885.

On Friday, July 30, the post offi ce is cele-brating its 125th anniversary with a birthday party complete with cake and refreshments from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Canada Post has issued a limited edition commemorative stamp to celebrate the post offi ce’s anniversary, and Schulze has had a series of postcards printed for the occasion.

She is just the 13th postmaster at the Whonnock Post Offi ce since it opened 125 years ago.

“I love my job,” says Schulze. “It’s very social. I know everyone by name. It’s pretty

strange to get someone in here who I don’t know, actually.”

The personal service isn’t lost on her cus-tomers.

“If this wasn’t here, I’d have to go into town, and there you’re just a faceless num-ber,” says Kelly Pieterse, a school teacher at Harry Hooge elementary who’s lived in Whonnock for close to 10 years now. “Sue knows everyone by name. It really is the cen-tre of town.”

The post offi ce was originally housed in the Whonnock General Store, a few metres from where it sits today. When the store burned down in 1916, the post offi ce was given its own building on the site it occupies today. The building was rebuilt in the 1932, and save for the addition of a sorting room out

the back, it remains largely as it has for the past 80 years.

In the early days, the mail came by train, but the community of Whonnock was so small, the train didn’t even slow down. In-coming mail was hurled from the train in a heavy canvas bag, while outgoing mail was hoisted atop a wooden post close to the tracks so the bag could be snagged with a hook and hauled on board as the train whizzed by.

At least, that’s how it was supposed to hap-pen.

According local historian Fred Braches, on the occasions when the hook would miss its mark, the mail bag would be gutted like a pig, its contents spilling out over a quarter mile of track behind the train, letters litter-ing the ground.

Any mail bound for Langley was rowed across the Fraser River, or, in winter, dragged across the frozen river on a sled.

Regular delivery service began in 1938, and today three rural routes operate out of the post offi ce.

A few modern touches have been added. A computer cash register and parcel scanner sit in one corner of Schulze’s offi ce.

And while technological innovations like email have cut down on the volume of let-ters, Internet sites like eBay have increased the number of parcels coming through the post offi ce.

At the heart of Whonnock

Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS

Sue Schulze is the 13th postmaster at the Whonnock post office, a social hub for residents in east Maple Ridge.

Post offi ce celebrates 125 years with party next Friday

b y R o b e r t M a n g e l s d o r fstaff repor ter

Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS

Schulze bought the post office building, rebuilt 80 years ago, in 1994, when she became postmaster.

See Post office, p4

“You come down here every day and you get to run into people and see what they’re up to.” Holly Long, Stave Falls resident