OTD: Canada’s first post office opens in Halifax

On today’s date in 1755, the first official post office in present-day Canada opened in Halifax, N.S.

Two years earlier, noted polymath and Founding Father of the U.S. Benjamin Franklin was appointed deputy postmaster general of Britain’s colonies.

Since 1749, these colonies included Nova Scotia and Newfoundland (as well as New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina).

FIRST REGULAR MONTHLY MAIL SERVICE

Franklin organized the first regular monthly mail service between Falmouth, England, and New York in 1755.

To connect Halifax with the Atlantic colonies and the newly organized mail service to England, he also established what would become the first official post office in present-day Canada (although a post office for local and outgoing mail was established in Halifax by stationer Benjamin Leigh in April 1754). Any available vessel carried mail from New York to Halifax until 1788, when regular packets came through the port.

Canada’s postal services remained under British control until 1851.

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