Work Through Time: Cape Breton Stories of Land & Sea

Even when the telephone had made its debut in the more populated areas and was a familiar part of most homes, those in remote areas of Inverness County still had difficulty obtaining the service. Poles on private property had to be provided, erected, set, and maintained by the subscriber.

Switchboards were located and run in private homes by operators, who whether they liked it or not, acted as the unofficial information service for communities in their exchange.

The local operator could often be counted upon to tell you that someone was away and there wasn’t much point in ringing his house. She would also be expected to know weather and road conditions, where the snow plow was, why the mail was late, and whether the milk truck or school bus could make it through the storm.

For a salary that was a mere pittance she often had to be available to the switchboard eighty-four hours a week and three or four hours each Sunday and holiday. If ill or faced with the necessity of being away from home, she had to recruit family members or hire help at her own expense.

A long distance call to “The Boston States” or out of the area was a social event of note, and word would usually get around that a call was to be made at a certain hour. Usually, with some degree of good humor, it was taken for granted that the entire line would be listening in, and you might even be asked to speak louder or repeat for an older eavesdropper.

Until recently, calling into Inverness County from the United States or an urban area often presented problems to the caller. Operators outside the area may never have seen a crank phone, or home switchboards, and when presented with numbers such as "1", or "31-15", or "2 ring 31," were convinced that you were a prankster, drunk, insane, or all three, and tended to cut you off rather crossly. Once convinced of your good intentions, you may have been required to wait as long as an hour before the operator could discover how to connect your call.

As late as 1976, the handsome wooden "box" graced the kitchens and parlours of homes in Inverness County. Little thought was given to the end of an era when the shiny, plastic and impersonal version of Mr. Bell’s invention gained prominence. Today’s modern, sophisticated systems are without that familiar voice that people in a community would come to know so well. If the changeover from crank to touchtone was inevitable, the old time operators in Inverness County must derive some satisfaction from knowing that the cost of replacing them was in the millions of dollars!

This portrait of the role of switchboard operators in the small towns of Inverness County appeared in the February 1980 issue of The Participaper.

© 1979-2009 The Department of Recreation .