SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Mail carrier Vicki Cook has never been attacked by a dog. However, a wiener dog did chase her car once.

Mail carrier Vicki Cook sorts letters, parcels and magazines at the Yellowknife mail processing plant on May 10. She has been delivering mail for close to 10 years. - Jeanne Gagnon/NNSL photo

Cook delivers the mail, including parcels and flyers, by vehicle along her route which includes stops behind Wal-Mart. Her route has 26 stops and takes about 90 minutes, and she picks up the outgoing mail along the way to be processed at the plant.

"The first couple of days, I got lost a couple of times," she said. "I mean, I lived in Yellowknife a long time and I got lost out there."

She said it was frustrating at first until she figured out where to turn to follow her route's "line of travel."

Her day begins at 8:30 a.m. at the Yellowknife mail processing plant to welcome the inbound first class mail arriving by planes and trucks. As the mail arrives sorted by route, she then further sorts it by specific address, placing the letters, postcards and other items into small, labelled boxes at the plant. She has another set of slightly bigger boxes for magazines and other such items.

Before she's about to start on her route, Cook pulls the letters and the magazines together, in order of the stops she has to make.

After she delivers the mail on her route, she goes back to the mail processing plant to sort mail arriving during the day. She said she typically works five hours a day.

Cook started as a contractor in August 2000, first delivering mail in the downtown area. She said those routes are more time consuming as they involve getting out of the vehicle and going into buildings, as opposed to her current route where the community mailboxes are along the road.

The physical aches, pains and strains are something she said she didn't expect. But she added she enjoys being active, as it makes the time go by quickly.

"I like working outside for the most part. When I started, not so much," she said. "It can be challenging because you can't wear a mitt. You need to be able to do your letters and flyers, so you need your fingers. A mitt would just slow you down. You don't want to be slow when you're outside in the cold. You want to go get it done and move on. As long as you're dressed for it, it's not that bad."

Her hard work sometimes goes unnoticed by residents who get mail on regular basis, but she said one resident she will always remember.

"He actually showed up at my door and dropped off some chocolates for me a couple of Christmases ago because he couldn't find me out on the route," she said. "I was just blown away by that. I thought that was just so sweet of him."