This may sound an odd question- but do we have to register or do anything for us to get post at our address?

We have signed up for a rental and the agent sent through a list of utilities and canada post is listed.

Gryphea

Maybe they are just assuming that you are moving from one Canadian address to the other and if that were the case you would want to inform Canada post to forward your mail

Hi Gryphea,

When we came over to NS we went into the Canada Post Office and advised them that we'd taken a 6 month lease on the property and they gave us a key for a PO box.

If anyone from the UK uses the proper street address our letters get a stamp saying "use the PO box" on them.

Just drop in and let them know, they lady was really helpful when we went in there.

If you'll be living in an established neighbourhood in which mail is delivered to your door, you won't need to do anything. Any mail that is addressed to you automatically will be delivered to the mail box outside your front door, once a day, Monday to Friday (with the exception of statutory holidays).

If you live in one of the newer neighbourhoods in which there is no door-to-door delivery of mail, there will be a cluster of mail boxes at the end of your street. You will need to go there to retrieve your mail. My understanding is that, if you have that kind of arrangement, there is no need to inform Canada Post. On the other hand, at the time that you officially move into your rented accommodation (when you're given the front door key and so on), you also should receive the key to that mail box.

There are some places in Canada in which there is no home delivery of mail, and all mail is delivered to Post Office Boxes. Banff, Alberta is one such town that I know of. However, there is home delivery of mail in Calgary (with the exception of newer neighbourhoods, where the mail is delivered to the clusters of boxes that are located at street corners).

When I first moved to Canada I lived in a new sub-division that had a temporary collection of mail boxes at the end of the street. I called Canada Post to ask how we could get our mail. They told us which box was ours, but said they would not deliver mail to the box until we secured it with a padlock. A few months later they replaced the temporary boxed with permanent ones - they told us which was our box and gave us 2 keys.

Where we live now, the mail is delivered to our door just as in the UK (though houses out here don't have letter box slots, so the mail is left in a box by the front door).

A few years ago we bought a house on the Sunshine Coast. This is on a rural delivery route. The whole village is served by a huge collection of mail boxes by the community hall. Here you have to go to the post office and tell them you have moved in. They change the locks on the mailbox each time.

gryph - I have the vaguest, vaguest recollection of a group of post boxes just up the road from your house-to-be (eek, nearly there).

Your realtor should provide you with a key or two to one of these boxes, and very importantly, actually tell you which one is yours - do ask!! - and your post should end up there - which you can collect as and when you feel like it (I am now terribly forgetful in collecting my post - I leave it for days, then collect the biggest waste of paper and adverts you ever did see !!)

When we moved into our house the previous occupants did not leave a note advising us which box was ours our realtor kindly tried every box in the neighbourhood, we gave up and went to post office who advised us which one it was (and it was one the realtor tried already ).

I suspect your nearest post office would be on the Crowfoot Plaza, in one of the drugstores there (near Petland) if you have any problems ??

Another possibility is that you move to a place on an establish rural route, our address is just "Name, RR2, Distant_Town, Ontario, Postal Code, Canada). The postal code is that of the post office not the property. We had to go to the post office to tell them that we now lived at the property which is legally something like "fire number n, lot n, bounded by line n and n, concession n and n, old survey". We wrote our names on the mailbox and, voila, bills, notices of conviction, all manner of administrivia started arriving.

If you are lucky that is. Do not expect the same standards as you get from Royal Mail. Ok, I can understand that it takes days for a letter to get from TO to BC (it is a big country after all) but last month it took two weeks for a registered letter to go 4 miles yeah, welcome to Canada Post

Clare

Gryph

We didn't register anything when we moved into our condo, post just arrived in our box in the street and we collected it. As people have said, you should get a key for the post box when you get your house keys - depending where you live.

When we moved into our house a month later we just sorted a 3 month post redirection - very easy to do.

Cheers
ARH

We just went to the post office and gave them our address, showed them proof of who were are, they then gave us two keys to a po box.