Matters Progressed Slowly Enough Until 1816,
When Mr. David Sutherland Succeeded Mr. Heriot.
In 1817 be opened six
additional offices of delivery in Lower Canada which made the total number
of offices in operation thirteen.
Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island
were placed under the management of independent offices, and in that year
the mails were still expedited but weekly to New Brunswick. In 1824, Mr.
Sutherland was succeeded by Mr. Thomas Allen Stayner, and it was in this
year that New Brunswick was endowed with an independent postal department.
Mr. Stayner administered his important office for the space of twenty-
seven years, with great zeal and giving entire satisfaction to the public.
He greatly increased the number of local offices, and inaugurated many of
the reforms which have since developed into that vast and safe system of
communication with which our people are so familiar. On the 6th of April,
1851, the Canadian Mail Department was transferred from the Imperial to
Provincial control, the first Postmaster General being the Hon. John
Morris. Some idea of the progress made from 1760 to 1851, a period of
ninety years, may be obtained by contrasting the department under Benjamin
Franklin and that over which Mr. Morris was called to preside. The
courier, who made monthly journeys on horseback between the military posts
of Quebec and Montreal, and whose safe arrival at either of those then
distant cities would no doubt cause the utmost satisfaction to the King's
lieges, male and female, had been replaced by the steamboat and soon would
be by the railway; and the two primitive post offices of Canada had
expanded into a network of 601 local offices, transmitting among them
letters to the number of 2,132,000 annually.
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