Debra Dolan has been mailing postcards to herself for more than 40 years.
Postcards, she says, provide a snapshot not only of the time and place but also who she was in that moment — like a time capsule.
Dolan, 65, an avid traveller who lives in West Vancouver, even sends them to herself from local spots she visits, such the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Her love for the written word also includes writing to pen pals around the world, corresponding with family and friends by post and exchanging daily notes with her newspaper carrier, explaining, “we are both storytellers.”
“I have learned more about myself from writing, to myself and others, than lovers, therapy or aging could ever do,” Dolan said.
“It is such an innately personal and deeply human experience that social media, emails, texts and any form of modern technology cannot replicate.”
As much as Dolan prefers putting pen to paper, fewer and fewer people seem to share her joy. Which has left some wondering: what do we lose as technology advances?
Letter-writing, a beloved tradition for so many, has been lamented as a lost art for years now, replaced by emails, texting and social media messages. Letter-post revenue is plummeting globally, according to the Universal Postal Union’s most recent report, and in an increasingly digital world, even penmanship has been declared endangered.
But for some, instant communication simply can’t compare with the feel of a hand-written letter or card. And those who still love putting a pen to paper say the experience can be deeply personal.
Like for Dolan, who says this holiday season will mark her 34th consecutive year of writing “a love-letter to my life.”
“Reading them back consecutively — all the joys and challenges of my life — bring me such joy,” Dolan said. “I am almost certain that anyone lucky enough to receive one just rolls their eyes … still I persist.”
The decline of letters
If the recent popularity of stationary shows, letter clubs and societies, and a resurgence of pen pals are any sign, letter-writing isn’t a dead art just yet. But still, the overall trend is somewhat bleak.
The total volume of letter mail Canada Post delivers has been declining for years, even as the number of addresses in Canada increases, according to the corporation’s annual financial report. In 2006, a Canadian household received an average seven letters per week. Now it’s two per week, according to the report.
Letter mail per address (letters, postcards, cards, bills, invoices, etc.), has declined by nearly 50 per cent in the last decade, from an average 246 pieces of letter mail per household in 2014 to 124 pieces of letter mail per household in 2023.
The number of addresses Canada Post delivers to has increased by 1.9 million during that same time frame.
The issue isn’t unique to Canada Post, the report states, explaining that postal services in advanced economies around the world are experiencing similar challenges “as part of the rapid growth of e-commerce and digital transformation for consumers and businesses.”
In its 2023 report, the Universal Postal Union — a UN agency — projects that revenue from letter-post services globally will decline to about 29 per cent of postal service revenue by 2025, from more than 50 per cent in 2005.
Meanwhile, in schools across Canada, teaching cursive hand-writing is on the decline.
Some young adults and teens don’t know how to sign their own names, according to the New York Post, which some say is part of the reason 13,000 mail-in votes in Nevada were held back during the recent U.S. election due to people’s signatures not matching those on file.
About 55,000 workers across the country began picketing Nov. 15. While delivery of regular mail is on pause, Canada Post employees on strike are still getting letters to the North Pole.
‘The medium is really the message’
That’s something Elena Woo, 41, of Toronto is hoping to change.
Woo is the producer and editor of Young W, an online directory and shop that encourages what she calls an analogue lifestyle, including letter-writing, art and other “beautiful things in life.”
“I want to remind people they have a choice,” said Woo, explaining that writing letters can be done in addition to more modern ways of staying in touch.
It’s not as if there are only two extremes, she added, where one is algorithmic and the other is paper letters delivered by a horse-drawn carriage. And Woo says she believes that if we exclusively communicate digitally, we lose out on community and connections.
But more than that, letter-writing, she says, is as much for herself as those on the receiving end.
“You’re reflecting on things in a different way that you would if you were writing an SMS … or a Facebook message,” Woo said. “The medium is really the message.”
The Current15:21Reviving the endangered art of handwriting
In an era of texting, voice memos and email, some people are pushing to revive the handwritten word. Hetty Roessingh, professor emeritus at the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, talks about that push.
‘Quite emotional’
For others, letters are memories.
Colin Mason, 71, a retired academic living Kilmaurs, Scotland, recently reread some of the letters he sent his wife 40 years ago, when he was teaching geography in Ottawa for six weeks. He and his wife, Judith, had been married for five years, and it was the first time they’d been apart, he said.
He’d been homesick and wrote two or three letters to Judith each week during that stretch in 1984. Judith kept them all.
“It was quite emotional, reading these letters again,” Mason said. Judith died in 2015. He has since remarried, but held onto the letters, as well as Judith’s replies.
“I’m surprised in terms of how romantic I was, saying how much I missed her,” he said.
“I’m missing you terribly. Much more than I could have possibly imagined. I was fighting back tears on the journey from Gatwick,” he read aloud from one letter, chuckling at himself.
Today, he admits he mostly sends emails, but still enjoys sending an annual handwritten Christmas letter to family and friends.
‘It is magic’
Rick Strong, 83, of Ottawa, says he and his wife enjoy sending Christmas letters and cards each year, as well. It’s a tradition he’s upheld since he was a child, as well as a way to keep a record of their own year.
Of course, this year, given the Canada Post strike, his plans may have to change.
“We will get around the strike by sending email greetings and appending a note apologizing for the delay ‘because of the mail strike’ to any card,” Strong said.
Dolan, the postcard enthusiast in West Vancouver, says it’s a shame letter-writing is becoming a lost art, explaining it’s one of the oldest and simplest forms of communication, as well as a wonderful method of self-expression.
Plus, she adds, it’s tactile, and she loves to touch and reread the hundreds of letters she’s received, as well as imagining the many hands that have come in contact with a single piece of mail.
“I love that postcards are an open invitation to be read by others as they move from one country to the next.”
And there’s nothing better than opening her mailbox to find a letter waiting, she added.
“It is magic.”