These London, Ont., volunteers are helping get letters to Santa despite postal worker strike

For two weeks every December, Mike Mulder of London, Ont., has a routine: He arrives at his local Tim Hortons at 8 a.m., orders a coffee and begins sorting through a stack of letters addressed to Santa Claus.

A member of the Hyde Park Lions Club, which collects letters to Santa at the Hyde Park Santa Claus Parade, Mulder has been a direct line between kids and the man at the North Pole for eight years. 

Usually, Mulder sends a response from Santa to Londoners through the mail. This year, due to the strike by Canada Post workers, he is taking it upon himself to make sure Santa's replies get into mailboxes by hand.

"Just having a personal letter addressed from a big guy is a pretty big deal," Mulder said. 

On Nov. 15, 55,000 Canada Post workers across the country started picketing, asking for changes to wages, benefits and working conditions. 

The postal service shut down operations during the strike, meaning mail and parcels will not be delivered, no new items will be accepted and some post offices have been closed at this time.

This has also led to a temporary halt on Canada Post's Santa letter program, where children can send a wish list to Santa by a specific date and postal workers help deliver responses back to children at no cost.

On Tuesday, Canada Post announced it had removed its deadline on this year's letter program and that all children will receive a response back from Santa once operations resume, though that timeline remains unclear.

That's why Mulder is getting involved. 

His plan is to address, stamp and mark each letter so they look as if they have gone through the mail system, then drive to each house to deliver at the crack of dawn. 

"I'd say 70 per cent of the letters are all within a five-kilometre radius of where I live because the parade is a local parade," said Mulder. "I'm up at 5 a.m. so I can sneak through the neighbourhood."

Meet Santa's helpers

Mulder is not the only Londoner stepping up so children's letters to Santa receive a response.

"It was a realization that, 'Oh my goodness, we need to do something because Canada Post is not getting these letters to Santa or to the children,'" said Donna Szpakowski, CEO of the Hyde Park BIA. 

The BIA, which collects letters at holiday events in collaboration with the Hyde Park Lions Club, will mail the letters meant for houses too far for Mulder to drive.

Szpakowski said she would be using a local courier company called Helix to deliver another 150 letters. The BIA also has its own email address that children can use to send their wish lists digitally.

"We want to do everything we can to ensure there's no disappointment due to a postal strike." 

The London Santa Claus Parade has collected letters to Santa every year since its inception in 1956, said Shaun Merton, executive director of the parade committee.

Most years, Merton said, the committee uses the Canada Post letter program to ensure children get responses from Santa, but during labour disputes, it connects with a group of retired postal workers instead. 

Members of the Heritage Club a group for retired and long-service Canada Post employees, are helping to respond to children's Santa letters. They won't mail them out until the strike resolves, but the letters will be addressed and ready to go in advance.

"It's just part of the Christmas season and Christmas tradition, and I believe that's something very important," said Merton. "Every kid and every adult, one time or another, has sent a letter to Santa."

Last call for letters

Kids who are still putting their finishing touches on their letters to Saint Nick and hoping for a response can visit the Stoney Creek Community Centre, YMCA & Library. 

They can put their letters in the red mailbox at the front of the YMCA and retired postal workers will help respond to them.

"You can sense the excitement that children and families have that is so magical," said Shereen Fatima, a librarian at the Stoney Creek Library who started the initiative. 

"To see their hesitation this year while dropping letters off, not sure if they're going to get a response back in time, was a little bit of a motivator," she said. 

Fatima said that in the week and a half, the library offered to help respond to Santa's mail, and they received over one hundred letters. That's when they passed on the initiative to retired postal workers. 

Children can pick up their letters directly from Santa and one of his elves at the YMCA's holiday party on Dec. 12. 

Many of Santa's helpers said their newfound job comes with a positive return.

"It's the love you can feel through that letter," Mulder said. "You really get a true feeling of the joy of Christmas through a child's eyes or writing."