The Past
Businesses
Churches
Communities
Community Services
~ City Hall
~ Fire
Department
~ Health Care
~ Justice of
the Peace
~ Library
~ Newspaper
~ Police
Department
~ Post office
~ Telephones
~ ~ Hinderance
or help
~ ~ History of
Telephones
~ ~ Duties of Operators
~ ~ Operators
in Enderby
~ ~ Modernized
services 1990
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The operators who worked here sometimes
had to be a jack-of-all-trades. They operated the switchboard, kept the books for B.C.
Tel, collected the monthly bills and on occasion when no lineman was available Chief
Operator Barbe
would change batteries in a telephone. After a thunderstorm, during which they kept at a
safe distance from the switchboard, they would trace the wires behind the switchboard in
order to clean the carbon that had accumulated when a line was struck by lightning.
It was a friendly and sociable occupation to be in during the early days of telephones
with limited numbers of subscribers and a party line that was relied on by trust; the
operators were able to take the liberty to converse.
They participated in unofficial services such as passing on the correct
time when the C.P.R. was to arrive and the progress of the local hockey game! Hockey scores were periodically
phoned in to the telephone office from Sid Speers' house, the closest to the rink, to keep
the townspeople posted.
The system and equipment they used were all very simple then. A switchboard was used to
connect two parties, lines were draped from trees in the surrounding area, and the
subscribers' phones hung on their wall. The telephone had a mouth-piece in which to talk,
and a crank on the side for ringing a number. Each phone had a different combination of
short and long rings. This ring sounded through everyone's home. One long ring reached the
Operator for long distance calls.
Mandy Daniells
ALF School 1989