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Telephone Era - Alberta

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Also south of Edmonton, but much closer to home on the opposite bank of the North Saskatchewan, was the Town of Strathcona. In 1889, Strathcona residents Robert McKernan and John Walter requested phone service. Two wires were extended across the river to link them to the Edmonton exchange.

Civic leaders in Lethbridge had also been working towards the goal of having their community take on a telephone system. Lethbridge became home to a long-distance line stretching to the US border in 1891.

Long-distance calling in Alberta had already been established by the time Lethbridge set up their phone line to the United States. At midnight on 1 November 1888, the first long-distance call in territorial history was placed by Alex Taylor in Edmonton to Hugh Richardson, the telegraph operator in Battleford, Saskatchewan, 300 miles away. Richardson had hooked up a telephone to the existing long-distance telegraph line in order for the call to take place. The time of the call was arranged so that other telegraph operators would disconnect their keys from the line to allow for clear reception.

Soon, other people wanted in on long-distance calling, and the rate was set at 15 cents for the first 10 words, with one cent for each additional word. The rates for phone calls were set in the same way as they were for telegraphs. Operators would act as third-party go-betweens for phone calls. An operator at either end of the line would receive a message from a caller, and count the words spoken in order to establish rates. They would then pass the message onto the receiver.

By 1890, Edmonton had grown into a town of 500 residents. Matt McCauley became the first individual to have a home telephone; other buyers quickly followed, necessitating a need for a switchboard, which Edmonton obtained in 1892. The first person hired to operate the board was fourteen-year-old Jenny Lauder, a daughter of the family who started the first bakery and confectionary in Edmonton.

On 10 July 1893, The Edmonton District Telephone Company Limited was officially granted a charter. At first, its exchange was open for only part of each day, but quickly shifted to 24-hour operation—except on Sundays. Even that concession fell by the wayside by 1900, when service was being offered seven days a week to an exchange boasting 102 phones.

The exchange lines had begun extending into more rural areas, including Ellerslie and Beaumont, in 1901. Calls to these places were 25 cents and 35 cents respectively. Lines from Edmonton to rural areas appeared two years later.

Even as the town council toyed with the idea of purchasing Edmonton’s utility providers, the Bell Telephone Company was creeping westward and looking at the town as a potential market. Whether it wanted to set up competition or merely buy Taylor’s exchange, the telephone giant’s interest in Edmonton left most people unimpressed. On 17 November 1904, 10 days after Edmonton had been incorporated as a city, the council bought Taylor’s exchange for $17,000.

The antipathy was such that even when Bell resurrected the old dream of a line between Edmonton and Calgary—complete with an accurate timer for long-distance calls—citizens in Edmonton were cautious about accepting this over-generous offer.

The telephone era had come to call at last.

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