Featured Article - Archie the Linemen

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Alberta Online Encyclopedia

Employment of
Women

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Telephones and oil lamps went together in rural Alberta. Around Westlock the only electric lights were in the town itself and there only because one citizen understood the technology. Bob Wheatley was the citizen. Bob had a garage, and lighted the town with a diesel engine in the back of the shop. From six in the morning till midnight Bob's power plant went chug chug chug chug, generating alternating current. Bob played this end of his business by ear. If the number of chugs suddenly increased he knew somebody had put an extra load on the system. An electric iron drew 1,000 watts, equal to 17 60-watt light bulbs. Appliances were banned but people sneaked them on anyway. At 11:30 each evening Bob would blink the lights and make people scramble to finish their bridge games by midnight, when he pulled the switch and plunged the town into darkness. The townspeople knew Bob's engine couldn't run all the time and appreciated what it did for them. And he would always light up for Dr. Miller if a patient required an emergency operation in the dark hours. The charge was five dollars; which the doctor would send over in the morning - or on the first morning he happened to have so large a sum of money.

Close by the garage with its electrifying diesel engine stood Archie's workshop and the AGT telephone exchange. In the exchange were a few batteries producing direct current. Aided by the batteries Archie put in each farm telephone the Westlock exchange could reach farms
many miles away. But Bob's power plant could not transmit current beyond the town. The telephone system, ambitious and difficult to maintain though it was, ran on a fraction of the cost required to transmit alternating current over the same distance.

In his telephone travels Archie had got to meet almost everyone in the district; he'd even got to know his wife in the performance of his duty. Only a few weeks after taking over his job he received a complaint of trouble in the region of sharp hills and tall trees near Campsie. He found that some of the tall timber had fallen across the line. By the time he'd played lumberjack and restored service the sun was sinking. Travelling telephone men soon learned the best farm houses to be near at meal times. Archie had been tipped that Will Wallace, the telephone agent at Campsie, set a fine table so he urged his car over the so-called road and just happened to arrive at suppertime. He was made welcome by all the family including Will's daughter Helen. "Nelly Wallace awakened in me a distaste for further bachelorhood," wrote Archie. Mrs. Hollingshead was at home now, preparing the telephone man's favorite supper. She knew Archie might not be home for another for many days.

The wind paused for a moment, just long enough to shake the workshop and then race on into the darkness. "Sneaky, aren't you?" Archie chuckled. He thought he'd better push his head out into the blast and check the temperature. Advancing to the door he took the latch in a firm grip and pushed - just enough to read the thermometer. He liked what he read. The mercury was dropping.

Now it might seem strange that Archie could welcome colder air when he already had wind and snow to contend with, but he had a good reason. The mercury had stood at 31 degrees fahrenheit at noon; now it was down to a reassuring 16. It guaranteed dry snow, which could hit the wires but couldn't grab a perch like wet snow or sleet. The worst damage occurred with temperatures around the freezing mark. Even in weather clear and calm, moist air could coat the wires with a weight of frost that would weaken transmission or bring the wires down. Archie pulled the door tight, happy that there would be no frost on the wires.

When the Frost is On The Wires

When the frost is on the wires and the strings are
breaking down
And the Wire Chief is harrassed half to death,
Then the snooty Trouble Shooter must really go to
town
Out in weather that would nearly freeze his breath.

When the poles are bent and broken and the wire's in
the brush
And the snow descends in showers down your neck,
Then we use the sort of language that would make a
lady blush
And we earn at least a portion of our cheque.

It's a life, this trouble shooting, that has bitter
with the sweet
And a versatile producer it requires;
If you think you'd like to try it I will sell it to
you cheap -
Especially when the frost is on the wires.

Archie had written a poem about that – above – and it was through his poetry that he'd become the best-known "district" man in Alberta. He did the same work as others but he could find words to express what others could only feel. His poems were simple and sincere like Archie himself. They appeared in the AGT magazine and were reprinted in the newspapers of other telephone companies. He wrote somewhat in the style of Robert W. Service, who was able to put in words what many people felt but could not express about the Yukon gold rush. Archie was a friendly fellow who loved company but he could also enjoy the companionship of his own thoughts in the long hours when he had to travel alone. His poems took form in those solitary hours.

But now a skreek of hinges and stamp of feet informed Archie that he was about to have visitors. "Hi Archie!" "Looks like a big one eh?"

Tumbling out of the storm on their way home from school came George and Bob, sons of Mrs. Selfridge the telephone operator. The boys lived in the exchange building at the front of the lot, and it was considered proper for their mother to work because she was a widow; their father had died in the flu epidemic which swept the world in 1919. As agent and chief operator for A.G.T. she worked seven days a week. As agent she collected the money for long-distance calls and subscriber rentals. As chief operator she ran the switchboard with the help of local high-school girls at peak hours. Like Mr. Wheatley's power planf the Westlock exchange was on day service, from six in the morning till eight in the evening, but during the night there were emergency calls - for Dr. Miller, for the district nurse, for the druggist. They couldn't be refused, so Mrs. Selfridge slept beside the switchboard.

The switchboard stood close behind a counter, so Mrs. Selfridge could handle calls or cash by swinging `round on the high operator's stool. The wide-eyed kids who stood outside the counter to watch were in some awe of Mrs. Selfridge, because of the clicking, clacking, jangling wonder of her performance - plugging in cords, pulling them free, whirling cranks, telling the caller who wanted Mrs. Smith that she had just seen the lady go into Mr. Tice's drug store, talking to people in faroff places. The most dramatic performance was a real long-distance call.

In the rare event that someone should place a call to Winnipeg the kids standing in awe could hear it progressing across the three provinces and through six operators. Mrs. Selfridge would get Edmonton first, and then the call would advance through Calgary, Medicine Hat, Regina, and Brandon - cities where the prairie telephone systems had installed repeaters to boost the sound of voices - and finally reach Winnipeg. With alert operators it took only about fifteen minutes and to ensure no slowdown at the Winnipeg end operators there were forbidden to smoke, even on their own time. The company thought cigarettes slowed a girl's reactions.

On an occasion so rare as to be news in the community, someone might call Vancouver or eastern Canada, and in this event the call had to go down to Montana and then over American lines. A person driving a car to Vancouver or Toronto had to go the same route. The railroad builders had penetrated the mountain barrier of British Columbia and the wasteland of northern Ontario to give the country a trans-Canada railway system. But there was not yet a trans-Canada highway, or radio network, or telephone system.

Most kids were fascinated by the telephone office, and the high school girls, chosen to work there at twenty-five cents an hour, were much envied. But George and Bob, who lived there, found Archie's workshop much more attractive. The only exciting thing that had ever happened at home was the night Dr. Miller wheeled over the operating table to remove George's tonsils. A farmer named Luke Giesebrecht was in the office watching, and was so impressed that when George's tonsils were gone, Luke climbed up on the table and had his out too.

Archie's workshop was definitely more interesting. When the boys scrambled in out of the storm the District Plant Inspector was busy winding a half-mile of fine wire on to a piece of old broomstick. Nothing was ever thrown away in the telephone business, especially as conducted by the Alberta government. When the broom wore out Archie cut up the stick for rollers. When he replaced a faulty generator in a farm telephone he started to make a test set out of the old one. The generator wouldn't work because of a break somewhere in a mile of fine wire (sheathed in green cotton) which wound the armature. Through patient trial Archie located the break somewhere in the middle. He was now unrolling half a mile of wire to get at it. When he got there he would solder the broken ends together, wrap the knot with a cigarette paper, gum it tight and roll the half mile the other way.

When Archie was occupied with chores like wire-rolling he was free to tell stories, of which he had a large supply, and the kids liked to hear about his adventures in his first career. Archie had not always been a telephone man. He'd started out as a cowboy, and that's where he'd learned the rope tricks he performed at community entertainments. Archie's lasso (and Barney McAlpine's Irish step-dancing) were on every program.

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