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Telephone Era in Alberta >>
Companies >> Mutuals
Alberta has played host to a variety of telephone companies over
the years, especially during the Depression when the provincial
government sold its rural lines to 60 "mutuals," such as the
Lethbridge and Cardston Telephone Company, the Pincher Creek
Telephone Company, and the Clyde Telephone Company.
These companies—their official designation was "mutual telephone
associations"—had their origins in the WWI policy of Alberta premier
Charles Stewart (1917-21), who also took on the duties of minister
of telephones.
After 1915, the government of Arthur L. Sifton (1910-17) had
moved away from constructing rural telephone lines, allowing
instead, farmer-built lines to connect long-distance subscribers,
provided the lines met Alberta Government Telephones standards.
Twenty of these associations were in business when Stewart took
office, and he modified the Companies Act so that the mutuals were
recognized and registered without having to meet the standards of a
limited company. Construction standards were also abolished, further
encouraging the growth of the mutuals.
When the mutuals were finally in place, they tended to operate in
clusters. A quarter of these companies were in the area west of
Sylvan Lake, with another large grouping located to the north of
Drumheller.
The institution of the mutuals, originally conceived as a
temporary measure, occurred at a time when AGT’s business volume had
increased but not its physical expansion. Popular historian Tony
Cashman, in Singing Wires, tells us that revenue rose from $992,000
in 1914 to $1,265,000 in 1917.
The rationalization for the mutual approach to the Alberta
telephone business, was simple, writes Cashman. "The idea was that
as soon as the government had more money it would buy up the cheap
temporary systems at $20 per phone and replace them with genuine AGT
construction. However, it would be half a century before the
government would be so rich. And in the Great Depression which was
to mar the 1930s the province would be so poor it would have to
abandon the rural lines entirely and leave them to mutual telephone
companies …"
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