Driving through Nova Scotia with my partner in August, I found I was noticing a particular continuity. As we passed through town after town, the Canada Post logo stuck out to me wherever we went, facing outward from signs marking local post offices, often on a main drag beside a lone grocery store and a bar or two. In Pictou, Tatamagouche, and even Mabou, Cape Breton, where the post office is titled in Gaelic, the buildings caught my eye. 

I doubt I would have noticed them a year ago. It’s been a big year for Canada Post news, from the late 2024 strike to the labour negotiations that continue to unfold, despite the government’s best efforts to conclude the trouble. Headlines emphasize the Crown corporation’s impending bankruptcy, the union’s intransigence, holidays marred by delayed packages and backlogs. There’s an ongoing battle for Canada Post’s future, and the frontlines are clear—but what does it mean for a Canadian institution, a public service run like a corporate entity, to face such an existential crisis? In our cover story this issue, Stephan Boissonneault dives into the deeper organizational changes and material conditions underpinning the labour action at Canada Post, interviewing workers about what they describe as the degradation of a once-secure job; inquiring into the possible versions of a Canada Post for the twenty-first century; and considering the role that public services play in this country.

Though set in a very different context, similar questions about Canadian institutions, how they are structured and who they serve run through the second feature in this issue. Saylor Catlin’s first-person reflection on her time living in the Rockies centres a haunting encounter with the rare white grizzly bear Nakoda, as Catlin unpacks the frequent vehicle collisions killing bears in our national parks system. Elsewhere in the magazine, reported pieces and reviews spotlight underground and emerging artistic communities bringing a welcome experimentalism and collectivity into their respective spheres, from the South Asian dance music scene in Toronto to Haitian Canadian cinema and plain-clothes clowns in Montreal. 

As Canadians lift their proverbial elbows up, the stories in this issue—my first as Editor-in-Chief, alongside Maisonneuve’s new Associate Editor Aysha White—offer a chance to think about the kinds of values that could serve as organizing principles for people living on these lands going forward: community, reciprocity, creativity. Abstract ideas made tangible in places like the brick-and-mortar post office, whose presence feels like a given, until it’s gone.

Rosie Long Decter is the Editor-in-Chief of Maisonneuve.