Myrtle Kehler

Chilliwack Progress: Wednesday, February 25th, 1987.

Personality Profile: MYRTLE KEHLER: She's first class!
by Penny Lett

If you wrote a letter or sent a parcel to a Yarrow resident during the last 30 years, it went through the staff, if not the hands of Myrtle Kehler. Since 1977, and until January 9th of this year [1987] she was the Yarrow post master.

"There was me; two regular part-time; one casual and on rural route carrier - all women," she points out, listing her staff. Kehler has lived in the area since 1936, but was born in Penticton. "We moved to North Vancouver when I was 10 months old. I remember in Grade 5, there was a map on the wall showing a perfectly round Sumas Lake. Now I live where the lake used to be until it was drained in the 1920's," she notes.

At 11, Kehler moved to Chilliwack. She attended Cheam School on Banford Road. "For kids from the city to go to a two room school with eight grades was quite a change." "We'd never seen a real live cow. We'd watch them milk and sometimes got squirted. The warmth of the milk surprised us.

It was during the Depression. We'd watch for the fruit trees to ripen. There were cherries all down Banford Road and we could eat as much as we possibly wanted," she remembers.

Kehler's was the first class to enroll in the then new Chilliwack Junior High School.

"My Dad died, so my sister and I left school to work to help Mom. We worked at the Empress Hotel. Afternoon tea was served there. Initially, it was my job to wash the fine china and glasses," she says.

At 18, she, her sister and another friend became Vancouver room-mates. They worked at the Hotel Vancouver. "It was during the war and most of the waiters were gone. I had to 'bus' for six months while I learned the French service. I saw Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone and Rochester. Baron Rothschild often stayed there", she recalls.

The war closed many of the CPR hotels. In the spring of 1946, Banff Springs Hotel re-opened. Kehler and her sister were chosen to be part of its staff. "When I got there, I found that I couldn't work at that altitude. I had to come back to Chilliwack."

She also came back to John Kehler. They had met before the war. "We met, when he knocked me down at the Cultus Lake Roller Rink," she laughs.

With her logger husband often away, Kehler moved with her mother to Vancouver to work in a Reliable Drug Store. "It was the fall of 1948. The store had a post office substation. That's where I first got interested in the post office," she says. It was an interest that lasted. In the spring of 1949, when a stamp was 2 cents, she helped out at the Yarrow Post Office. In 1952, John became post master at Yarrow with Kehler as his full-time assistant. She had a break in service during 1962. In 1977, she took over her husband's position.

"I'm very fond of the Mennonite people I served. It was a cultural change from living in Vancouver. The people here were quiet, clean and very hard working. In the 1960's Yarrow had a rural route put in. It's a 30-mile route with 400 stops. We have 610 lock boxes in the lobby and a general delivery of 50-60."

"In season, chicks get mailed out and bees are mailed in. When you live in a small community and the mail doesn't get through, you get concerned. We were generously remembered at Christmas. The public always supplied me with baking."

"Lately though, in the past few years, I have been a little reluctant to say where I worked," she laughs at being the brunt of postal jokes. Now, with congratulatory plaque from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in hand, Myrtle Kehler has retired.

"I'm not much of a letter writer, I write only memos. No, I don't collect stamps. Now, I'm going to do what I wanted to do all my life - golf! I also plan to do community service work two days a week. "I wouldn't be happy doing nothing and I like to feel that I'm of value to someone," she concludes.

With a street named in the family's honor, Yarrow has found that Myrtle Kehler's value, like that of the Canadian stamps (now 34 cents) has appreciated.