Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (July 02/99) - Yellowknifer Elizabeth Noel credits the publicity surrounding her ordeal with Canada Post over a lost parcels to the recovery of her items this week.

"It was the squeaky wheel that got the grease," she said.

Noel's encounter with Canada Post began April 9 when she mailed two packages to the East Coast containing school dresses she'd made for her four nieces. Noel said that after two months had passed without the packages being delivered, she contacted the post office but received abrupt, unhelpful responses to her inquires.

But Noel said publicizing her story sparked a call earlier this month from Canada Post's Ottawa office, which requested photographs of the lost dresses so that a search of the Undeliverable Mail Centre in Scarborough, Ont., might be made.

And Noel, who is currently visiting family in Dartmouth, N.S., said Tuesday evening that she'd received another call from Ottawa telling her the packages had been found in a mailbag containing 21 parcels in an Edmonton post office.

"They phoned on Friday," she said, "and apparently Dave Craig (Canada Post's area manager in Yellowknife) had phoned Ottawa to say do what you have to do to find those parcels."

Noel said she was told by a staff member at the Ottawa office that Canada Post would be doing a clean sweep of the Edmonton branch where the parcel bag was found.

"They said that to compensate me they would send me some courier packages," said Noel, adding with a laugh, "and I told them to make sure they didn't get lost in the mail."

Noel said one of the two parcels has already arrived in Dartmouth. She said her nieces Jenine, 7, and Tiffany, 5, look great in the dresses -- which Noel made out of material decorated with school buses and letters of the alphabet to mark the little girls' academic debuts this fall.

Noel said the only problem now is that her other two nieces, Jessica, 5, and Katie, 4, are also visiting Dartmouth and won't receive their own dresses until they return home to Newfoundland, where the second parcel has arrived.

"They're a little jealous of the other two," said Noel, "and are asking where their dresses are."

Still, Noel said she's thrilled with the way things have worked out, but credits her happy ending to pushiness.

"I really don't think those parcels would have been found if things weren't stirred up," she said. "It got their attention -- you play Mr. Niceguy and what do you get?"

Noel said she called Yellowknife's main post office and left a message thanking Craig for his efforts.