This article is from page 34 of the 2007-11-27 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 34 JPG
THERE are people in east Clare who will forever have cause to be grateful to Kevin Canny.
In the 41 years plus that Kevin has been delivering letters and parcels to his native Feakle and surround- ing areas, he’s brought a lot of good news.
And some bad. But for Kevin, who followed in his father’s footsteps as postman and whose daughter is now taking up the reins as he retires, it is, in his own words, “in the blood”’.
“IT remember 35 years ago, going to the house of a man who was known to be a good man to swear. He said to me ‘well Canny, I suppose that’s another feckin’ bill?’ I joked with him that it was a letter from the Prize
Bonds office. As I walked back to collect my bike he let a shout out of him for me to come back. He asked me how did I know what was in the letter — he’d won £100.”
Kevin took over as postman from his father, John Canny, who earned a princely £19/23 when he started out in 1929.
Kevin’s route took him on a daily 27 mile journey, delivering letters to more than 400 homes on a bike.
‘People used to wait to see you coming, to see were you bringing a letter they might be waiting for from a child or relative who had emigrated to England or America. The Amer1- can parcels that used come brought huge excitement. They were clothes of amazing colours and materials and money sometimes. I remember one
Christmas, when we’d just got our first post van, a Renault, we had four American parcels for one house. We packed the four boxes into the van and you wouldn’t have got a pound of butter in with them. You can imagine the excitement in that house.”
Some days were not so happy. “You’d bring telegrams and people would ask you to open them because they were so afraid of what was in there. Telegrams were very often bad ea AS
He describes the days of delivering the post as “the happiest days of my Th tome
While getting motorised transport made the job physically more com- fortable, Kevin says he missed the bicycle.
“When we got the van, we were
pressured for time. Before that you’d stop for a chat with people, sit up ona ditch or go in for a cup of tea.”
As the people of Feakle parish gathered last Friday, along with rep- resentatives of An Post to celebrate Kevin’s years of bringing the news to homes in east Clare, Kevin himself had a proud boast.
With his daughter, Martina, now working a route round Killaloe he can say “there has been a Canny de- livering the post in east Clare since 1929.”