‘Where’s Navin?’ 6,000 Springfield residents get new addresses By: Tessa Vanderhart Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/08/2019 (1949 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An RM of Springfield woman who’s lived in the same home for 35 years says all of a sudden she has a new address — in the just-invented town of Navin, Man. — and hasn’t received mail in at least two weeks.

Colleen Baldwin lives at one of 6,000 addresses in the municipality affected by the change, Canada Post confirmed. She was told a letter was sent out in January warning residents, but she never got it. Canada Post said two letters were sent, in June and July.

“Whoever did this did not think it through,” Baldwin said. “The letter looked like junk mail.”

She only realized things were changing when her key didn’t work in her mailbox.

Like most rural residents, affected people in Springfield were getting mail delivered through a P.O. box address, to a rural route mailbox.

Baldwin’s mail will still go to the same location, a few miles away from her home, albeit a different mailbox with a new key.

But now it will be tied to her physical address — not her street address but the five-digit civic address emergency crews use to find rural homes.

“Now, after 35 years, they go, ‘Oh no, we’re going to give you a street number,’” Baldwin said.

“Everybody’s phoning me asking ‘Did you move? Where’s Navin?’ And I go no, (Navin) doesn’t exist. It’s quite strange.”

The RM of Springfield submitted six new community names to Canada Post for the project, a spokesperson said.

The change has sparked plenty of discussion on local Facebook groups; some residents had no problems while many others, like Baldwin, are still not getting mail.

Baldwin’s biggest concern is having to change her address on all her documents and subscriptions; she’s spent hours doing it so far, waiting on hold with credit card companies only to be told her new postal code isn’t working yet.

She thought a bright spot might be finally being able to get couriers to deliver to their home, only a few miles outside of the Perimeter Highway.

But the postal code is for her mailbox, not her physical address, although the switchover is supposed to align mail delivery with physical addresses.

“So I said, the UPS guy is just going to throw a package in a ditch and hope I pick it up?” she said. “I still don’t have a postal code… good luck finding me.”

It’s been two weeks since she got her mail and she doesn’t know where it is.

“Maybe some people are getting their mail but I sure as hell am not,” Baldwin said. She was expecting a government form to be delivered, nothing too important, but wonders what else hasn’t been delivered.

“I can’t even go and say I’ll pick it up, because nobody knows where my mail is… It’s such a botched job, it’s incredible,” she said.

Canada Post says she and her neighbours can’t get their mail delivered until their new address registration is complete. In the meantime, mail can be picked up at 1199 Nairn Ave.

However, they will get one free year of mail forwarding.

Canada Post says it’s been switching rural residents across Canada to the new civic addressing program for several years for consistency.

“Additionally, civic addressing helps Canada Post improve efficiency and accuracy of mail and parcel delivery while also assisting 911 emergency responders,” a spokesperson said.

tvanderhart@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @tessavanderhart