OUR FIRST TELEPHONE DIRECTORY

 [The Welland Tribune and Telegraph, 23 January 1923]

              Those present at the demonstration of modern telephony in this city last week and every telephone user of Welland, which includes practically every one able to talk, whether subscriber or not, would be interested in a small volume bearing the date of November 1896, and comprising the Subscriber’s Directory of the Eastern Exchanges of the Bell Telephone Co., of that year, which marked the inauguration of local telephone service.

             This diminutive volume, it being but 41/4 x 71/2 inches, contains 151 pages and lists the subscribers in the area from Collingwood to Belleville, saving Hamilton and Toronto. The type is large and the names are set single column on the pages, a good proportion of their size being occupied by advertisements.

             Under Welland Agency, we find that the central office is located on East Main street with B. Lundy as local manager, the office being open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. week days and 2 to 4 p.m. Sundays.

             There are nineteen subscribers, a list of whom follows:

             M. Beatty & Sons, Machinists; Canadian Express and G.N.W. Telegraph; Court House; German & Crow, Barristers; Dr. S.H. Glasglow; Grand Trunk Station; Alex. Griffiths, Harness, Hides and Coal Oil; Harcourt, Cowper & Maccomb, Barristers; Dr. J.H. Howell; Imperial Bank; S.D. Raymond, Manager; Industrial Home; B. Lundy, Books and Stationery; Mich. Central and T.H.&B. Station; Raymond & Cohoe, Barristers; Registry Office; F. Swayze & Son, Insurance and Ticket Office; Taylor & Cooper, Flour and Seed; Telegraph Printing Co.; Tribune, J.J. Sidey, Prop.

             No telephone numbers are attached to the names. In those days you asked for the subscriber wanted, and the operator identified the connection on the switchboard without the present day numerical aids.

             Time has wrought many changes in this list. The Court House still stands as does the Industrial Home and the Registry Office, but the last was not the edifice of today. But the two railway stations are with us in the same primitive beauty they exhibited then, and who knows but that they will still be standing thusly when time is not?

             The two newspapers are combined in one, and another manager’s name follows that of the Imperial Bank in the current directory; while of all the rest, but one name appears in the book we scan today just as it did then, Dr. J.H. Howell, and even in his case the “West Division St.” then following his name has been merged in that of the Bald St. we know.

             M. Beatty & Sons has passed out of existence as a firm name, although the business flourishes as that of the Canadian Mead-Morrison Co., Ltd. The names of the legal fraternity are familiar names today, but differently grouped. Dr. Glasgow and Alex Griffiths have passed on; the insurance field knows not Swayze & Son, but the name of Cooper is still identified with our own source of flour and feed. Books and stationery and his duties at the switchboard, for he combined his managership with the job of central handled by the pulchritudinous damsel of today, no longer weigh upon B. Lundy-all has changed in these six and twenty years.

             And the telephone business has changed too, and changed mightily. The 19 subscribers of that day have swelled to the present 1737 on the Welland exchange, with 482 more at Ridgeville, which is closely interrelated with the city operating boards. The staff of one man in the office and the switchboard, with probably a single lineman, has increased to the 46 now on the local pay roll.

             But there is one thing of which the old days has the present beat to a standstill-that book of 1896 was equipped with a string to hang it up by!