laura_halliday@mtsg.ubc.ca (01/18/89)
Back when I was in elementary school, my mum and dad decided they wanted to live out in the country, so we moved to a place about 50km west of Quesnel, B.C. At first we had no phone, then we had a radio phone because dad was the local manager for BCTel. Then we became a toll station... We remained Baker Creek 1-C for a couple of years. Everybody (10 parties? 12 parties?) was on the same line, and BCTel used coded ringing to identify subscribers. Our code was two long rings and two short rings. To place an outgoing call, you picked up the phone and it rang at the operator's console in Prince George (140km away). You told the operator who you wanted to call, and she connected you. Incoming calls had to go through the operator as well; you told the operator you wanted Baker Creek 1-C and she connected you after tapping out two longs and two shorts. I believe such calls were billed as operator-handled long-distance calls, at the same rate as for adjoining areas just outside of the local calling area. The system that had been in place before was administered by another phone company (NorthWesTel?). It used a home-made loop extender that was a big power transformer with the line to the CO hooked up to the filament winding, and with the line to the subscribers (a 12 party line, but no coded ringing) coming out the primary. We were beyond its range. Besides, it didn't work very well... We got a dial phone and 7 digits about 1974, when Baker Creek became part of the Bouchie Lake exchange (604-249). - laura halliday University of B.C.