Comments on: The Missing Telephone Operators of BC

By: Roly Brown

Roly Brown — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 03:26:19 +0000

In reply to Maureen Swoboda. We had to wait until the end of the war to get a phone at all. First phone was manual, Fairmont, but within a short time we were changed to Fraser, party line, of course. Spent nearly all working life at BC Tel and CT&S, retired just in time to miss Telus. Whew. Have a nice picture of magneto board at Mayne Island when I did the dial conversion in 1964.

By: Patricia

Patricia — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 22:12:21 +0000

Was there a B.C. Telephone exchange in Burns Lake B.C.?
I believe my sister worked in the exchange ?

By: Terry

Terry — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 01:01:28 +0000

Yukon 8 = 988 North van
Waverley 9 = 929 Deep Cove

We’re our exchanges growing up in NVAN

By: Maureen Swoboda

Maureen Swoboda — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 16:01:50 +0000

This was fun to read. I was an operator at the Alma exchange for three years(1954 -1957) during the summer and Christmas holidays while I attended UBC. I was only 16 years old and they hired me by mistake ! I did well and finally was trained for ‘Intercepting’. You actually got to talk to clients when they were called from an old party line phone to a new dial phone or when they were having problems with their call. It was great fun after only being allowed to say ‘Number please’ and ‘Thankyou’ you actually got to say, “What number did you call please?” I tried to get promoted to Emergency but it was the Chief Operator’s belief that no one 17years old was reliable enough to handle that job.
A Happy Incident One of the girls lost the diamond from her engagement ring as she was operating. It fell out of the ring and down into the machinery. Several years later when the building was being torn down a lineman found the diamond and it was returned to the young girl…an honest lineman!

By: Joe O’Connell

Joe O’Connell — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 20:18:44 +0000

We lived in Vancouver Heights , North Burnaby , Hastings in the ‘50/60s.phone no. GLenburn 0913 Y

By: Bob Rogers

Bob Rogers — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 15:49:48 +0000

In reply to Angus McIntyre. My mother was an operator working first in New Westminster, later Langara, then Amherst before finally being ‘automated’ out of a job at Hastings.

By: Gail

Gail — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 16:50:16 +0000

My grandparents lived in the west end and they received their dial phone along time before us as we lived in Kerrisdale. We could only practice our dialing on the grandparents phone if we did not take the receiver off the hook.Their number was PAcific 9094. I never knew that one day I would work for B.C. Tel for 21 years.

By: Robert L Hawkins

Robert L Hawkins — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 18:24:27 +0000

My family had West7384. On a party line. Can still remember that heavy hand set that limited the length of my phone conversations. Weak arms I guess.

By: Jim Matthews

Jim Matthews — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:42:42 +0000

Any chance anyone has a copy of the map that used to be in the front of every Vancouver White Pages showing the locations of the “prefixes/exchanges” for each Great Vancouver ‘city / village’? (the first 3-digits of the 7-digit telephone numbers placed on a map with boundaries just like the postal code map of Greater Vancouver – like 298 / 263 / 925 etc of 298-1234 / 263-1234 / 952-1234)

Great article by the way!

By: Caroline Brown

Caroline Brown — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 15:33:59 +0000

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I grew up in Fraserview in the 50’s and still remember the day we had our own “ private line” no more party line. Our new number was Elgin 2326. I couldn’t wait to talk to my boyfriend

By: Angus McIntyre

Angus McIntyre — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 19:48:22 +0000

In reply to Jim Cliff. B.C. Tel was on its way in the late 1940s to convert to dial telephones, but it took installation of automatic exchanges throughout the 1950s to complete the process. The newspaper ad from 1960 referred to the last manual exchange for local calls: "The B.C. Telephone Company is nearing completion of one of its biggest projects. When the conversion of the Hastings exchange from manual to dial service is finished all Greater Vancouver telephones will be 100% automatic." The HAsting manual exchange served 18,000 telephones, and the changeover happened in two stages. The ad also mentions "Direct Distance Dialing will come into effect in 1961", and phone number changes related to that.

By: Jim Cliff

Jim Cliff — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 16:54:18 +0000

I believe this article has a few errors. The newspaper clipping above is about direct dialling for long distance, not local calls. Dial phone conversion was well on its way in the late 1940s, my Dad installed a lot of this equipment in Vancouver, the Okanagan in the 40s and continued to do so at the Victoria Legislature in 1950-51. He later was foreman for installing 4w equipment that was part of the long distance direct dial system.

By: Larry

Larry — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 04:58:11 +0000

My mother was one of those switchboard operators in the early 50s.

By: Susan Anderson Behn

Susan Anderson Behn — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 00:27:01 +0000

I grew up in North Vancouver but learned my dads office number in town and my grandparents numbers long before they switched to these multi-digit ones. Our home number was North 543-R still long after the ones in the city had changed. We went eventually to a York number and eventially to a Yukon 8 number…those old numbers have all been useful as virtually uncrackable PASSWORDS until we needed more sopohisticated ones recently.

By: Brad Williams

Brad Williams — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 23:53:33 +0000

I am so glad that I was a little boy when the phone system changed. The good old days are filled with nothing more than a world of rose colored glasses. Today, its all about privacy, if you can find it among nearly eight billion people. Think my mom had the same seven digit number for over fifty years.

By: David Gibson

David Gibson — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 19:51:51 +0000

Our number was ALma2077. It wasn’t a party line because my Dad was a doctor. We three kids couldn’t wait for the “new” system, and on the appointed morning I got up early to make the first call from out house. Of course, I had no idea who to call, so I dialled the Time Of Day service. Once I was convinced it worked, I called the girl I was sweet on, and learned that she has also called Time Of Day at the same moment. Romance was in the air…