A one-storey red brick building stands at 5041A 50 Street in Mannville, under a hipped roof, with a sign that reads Mannville Historical Telephone Exchange. The front half was the public room. The back half was a home.
The Canada’s Historic Places register describes the front bay as the public area, with a pay phone, a service counter and a switchboard. The rear bay held the agent’s living quarters. The person who answered the switchboard lived on the other side of the wall.
Key facts
- A telephone line reached Mannville in 1908, and the first office opened in 1909 in S. K. Smith’s drug store.
- A new Main Street telephone office dates to December 1, 1917. Neil MacKinnon built it, and Ellen Ewing was agent.
- Alice Rutherford became agent in 1920 and held the role until 1965, living in the building, according to Alberta’s Historic Places blog.
- In the 1930s, six mutual telephone companies merged into one centred in Mannville. After 1945, Alberta Government Telephones bought out Mannville Mutual.
- Automatic dialling arrived on May 1, 1965, on one of the province’s first underground cable systems, and the exchange closed.
- The building later served as the community library. It was designated a Provincial Historic Resource in October 2009 and now operates as a museum.
From drug store to Main Street
Mannville’s first telephone office sat inside a drug store in 1909, a year after the line arrived. By December 1, 1917, the town had a purpose-built office on Main Street. Neil MacKinnon built it. He became mayor about a year later, according to the Alberta’s Historic Places blog, written by historian David Leonard.
Six companies, one exchange
The Depression pushed the region’s mutual telephone companies together. Six of them merged into one, centred in Mannville. After 1945, Alberta Government Telephones bought out Mannville Mutual. The exchange that began as one agent in one room had become the hub for the surrounding lines.
The switchboard goes quiet in 1965
On May 1, 1965, automatic dialling reached Mannville. The blog calls the underground cable system one of the first in the province. A modern exchange went up behind the brick building, and the old one closed. The register adds that a bathroom was added in 1954, eleven years before dialling replaced the switchboard.
Tribune arithmetic: from December 1, 1917 to May 1, 1965 is 47 years and five months of manual service in this building.
What the paperwork disagrees on
The register’s date field gives 1904 for construction, while its own text and the Alberta Historic Places blog both point to 1917. Those sources also differ on who ran the exchange after the 1930s. The register says local mutuals took over, and the blog says Rutherford stayed on as agent until 1965. The 1917 date and the 1965 closing agree across both.
Prairie towns keep their buildings in different ways. Vulcan holds one elevator of a former row, as the Vulcan elevator story shows. Meeting Creek’s 1913 station was moved five miles. Rowley runs a pizza night in a ghost town. Mannville kept the room where the town’s calls were answered.
A town’s voice once ran through two rooms of brick on 50 Street, and the building that held them is still standing there.
