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Once the king of communications, the payphone is no more

The last payphone in Cranbrook was retired in late 2022; there are only four left in the Kootenays. But not for long
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Robert DeNiro on the payphone in “Goodfellas.” Photo courtesy Warner Brothers

Everybody, everywhere, has a payphone story.

From a desperate collect call home to dashing into the nearest phone booth to change into our crime-fighting outfits, the public payphone on the wall, in the booth, or in rows, has been a ubiquitous and key part of our lives and society for three generations.

But those payphone stories we all have are fading into the realm of memory — or mythology.

Cellular technology has so transformed our lives that we’ve forgotten how important the payphone was. How a payphone could be found anywhere, anytime, whenever you needed to make a call.

But payphones only very recently vanished — and there are a few still hanging on. But not for long. The last payphone in Cranbrook — the very last — was decommissioned by Telus in late 2022. In the past year of that payphone’s career, it took in less than $20 in revenue.

“It’s such a deeply personal topic,” said Brian Bettis, Regional General Manager for Telus. “Over the last 80 years — hard to believe it’s been 80 years, when the first payphones were deployed across Canada, they have revolutionized communications.

The advent of the payphone provided communities with connectivity to the outside world, that didn’t have it before. Not to mention individuals, in those pre-cellphone days.

“Remember, you would see lines of people waiting to use the payphones,” Bettis said. “Or people would give the payphone as their phone number to be contacted with, and then wait for the phone to ring in the adjacent area.”

The cost to make a call on Cranbrook’s first payphone was five cents. And at the peak of their popularity there were more than 10,000 payphones in British Columbia.

“It was a significant demand item,” Bettis said,

“It is such a powerful piece of Canadiana, in terms of connectivity for such a large generation of people. Probably from the Baby Boomers into the Millennials. It’s a different world now.”

Telus has been in the process of upgrading its networks over the last 20 years, and, of course, significant investment has gone into incorporating cellphone technology.

“We’ve gone from thinking about a big, blocky payphones that have to be located somewhere, into the generation of satellite or bag phones, into the first iteration of cellular handsets, and now we have supercomputers in our pockets, that ultimately the capacity to connect in real time video with anyone you want, anywhere.”

As cellphones became more popular, manufacturers who make payphone replacement parts and handsets started to disappear, Bettis said.

”It’s like a watchmaker — a legacy skill set that was very valuable and in demand for a very long period of time. These craftspeople who maintained and supported payphones started to retire.”

The effect started to snowball. It became more and more difficult to get replacement parts. Payphone would get damaged or worn out with use. But the components would no longer be immediately available. Costs would go up, and the cost of installing payphone became more prohibitive, at the same time as revenues were plummeting.

“We’ve been on a generational journey to celebrate the history and the legacy of the payphone,” Bettis said. “We’ve been doing that through a series of ‘retirements’ in Western Canada in the areas where we have payphone services.”

There are currently four payphones left in the Kootenay-Boundary. In Sparwood, Elkford, Yahk, and Rock Creek. The last Cranbrook payphone had fewer than 20 calls on it for its last year of service, Bettis said. Less than 20 dollars of revenue. Late last year, it was dutifully retired into the care of a willing caretaker.

Telus sent a letter to Cranbrook Mayor and Council advising that the age of the payphone was no more.

“We also worked to post the payphone and offer it to a home. Two days prior [to it’s decommissioning], we put a sign on the last payphone in Cranbrook, and we offered the payphone to anybody who could give it a good home, who may want to keep it as a legacy asset or a fixture or a collector’s item. And the one in Cranbrook was claimed — privately, and so we donated it to a discerning resident who wanted to collect it. Then we made a donation to the Telus Future Friendly Foundation in the spirit of connecting to the community.”

As the state of Telus’s network continues to evolve, the rest of the payphones Western Canada, few as there are remaining, will be retired.

“It’s quite romantic when you think about it,” Bettis said. “The transition from an older, analogue technology, that is in sunset in a community, to the superior capability. To be replaced in a very thoughtful way, in such a way that [the community] didn’t know that it happened. We tried to model it so that it had the lowest amount of impact on the community.”



Barry Coulter

About the Author: Barry Coulter

Barry Coulter had been Editor of the Cranbrook Townsman since 1998, and has been part of all those dynamic changes the newspaper industry has gone through over the past 20 years.
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