I had a lot of children on the Ghost Story ride at Pumpkin Fest and I wanted them to be interested in history– so sometimes you have to look out of the box to get their attention. So how do you make the Carleton Place telephone building interesting? Well, I brought Ghostbusters into it– yes, kids today know all about Ghostbusters— but only the original one– they don’t really don’t care for the sequel LOL.

As I approached the old telephone building on Beckwith Street I asked them: “Who you gonna call?” and while a few said 911 most said, “Ghostbusters!! So that lead me to explain that once upon a time 20 odd woman asked “Number please” in that very building and they were kind of like the Ghostbusters of Carleton Place. Rational? Of course not, but they got it and hopefully remembered.

The telephone first came into public use in Carleton Place and nearby Ontario communities in 1885. The photo below shows the old telephone company building on Albert Street near the corner of Beckwith in Carleton Place that now houses Balance Within Yoga. The Bell building was (and still is) across the street from the old Zion United Church. It was built in 1927 and the interior was reported in the newspaper to be carefully finished. A glass partition separated the public space and the operating headquarters. Next to the switchboard there was an operator’s restroom and the chief operators desk along with a terminal rack at the rear. In the basement there was a new hot water furnace, coal storage space, a battery cupboard and a workroom for the parts man.

So that brought me to ask the kids if they knew what a telephone looked like before a cell phone. One young chap told me that his Father had said that ‘you had to put your finger in a hole and turn it in a circle”. I immediately felt very very old at that particular moment.

Who remembers dialing over and over again as fast as you could because the number you were calling was busy and you wanted to beat the next random person to the call i.e. calling radio stations or stores etc.

Bryan Reingold I miss the old phones and the ring. I know we can get a “ring” tone for our cell phones…but not the same. And the worst call you got was a wrong number….now with all this modern technology, call display, voice mail, digital dialing, etc…we also get spam calls, telemarketing, fraudulent phone numbers being used, etc. Our cell phones are no longer simple phones but pocket computers that you are attached to.

Ann Calcutt We still have one in the basement, years ago one of our daughters’ friends wanted to make a call and didn’t know how to use it, they thought it was ancient and took so long to dial 😐

Sandra Rattray We still have a vintage wall. phone from my father’s family home where it hung on the hall wall.

Some of the ladies who were the Bell telephone operators in Carleton Place. Photo- From Bonnie Tosh of Carleton Place– with Audrey MacDougall, Eve Gilhuly, Norma McKien, Helen Smich, Lois McGee, Norma Andison, Lous MacDougall, Inez Doucett, Retah Jennings Lalonde’s Real Estate Page, Mc Pherson, Phyllis – Mc Pherson Phyllis, Shirley F Nesbitt and Joan Whalen.