BARRHEAD - It is an end of an era.
Before the May long weekend, Telus removed the last payphone in the County of Barrhead in Thunder Lake Provincial Park.
Physically there is still one at Sunny Beach RV Park (formerly Elk's Beach), but it is part of the Onoway phone exchange.
Administrative executive assistant Pamela Dodds said Telus reached out to the Town of Barrhead in late March to inform the town it was was planning to remove the last payphone from the area, asking them to advertise the phone's removal in the local newspaper.
According to Canadian Radio and Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)'s 2015-545 policy, the public must be informed before a community's last payphone is removed.
County reeve Doug Drozd, who visited the site for a photo op before the phone's removal, said the phone was more modern than the versions he remembered, noting that not so long ago, payphones used to be a common sight.
"Every hotel and tavern such as the Dallas and the Lotus (now the Red Baron) had them in the lobby as did the grocery stores," he said. "Actually, at the Lotus, they had a payphone not only in their lobby, but there was one of the glass booth ones just outside on the corner."
Drozd added that the accompanying phonebooks were almost as important as the payphones themselves.
"People would drive into a town or community to visit someone, but they often didn't know the address, so they would find a payphone and often just rip the page out of the phonebook."
As for what will happen to the payphone, Dodds said they have arranged to donate it to the Barrhead Centennial Museum.
"I thought it might be cool that the phone be placed just inside the door, just like it was still functioning," she said.
For Brian Bettis, a Telus regional general manager, the removal of the payphones from communities across Alberta and B.C. is an opportunity for people to reflect on the importance and role the device played in communities over the last 40 years.
"Outside of the party line, payphones were how many people kept in contact," he said. "Anyone that is over a certain age can remember how they were given a dime or a quarter by a parent to call home for a ride or an emergency. Culturally, they were huge."
However, he said, in recent years, due to the overwhelming prevalence of cellphones, most payphones are no longer necessary.
And they are no longer financially viable, Bettis said.
"There was a time when payphones across Alberta would see upwards of one million outbound calls a year," he said. "But as they gave way to the state-of-the-art cellular networks across northern Alberta and Canada and the huge investments being made in data, payphone use is being dwarfed."
He said the payphone at Thunder Lake Provincial Park is a good example, adding in the last two-and-a-half years, it has been used less than 25 times.
"And in the year-to-date, it has been used seven," Bettis said.
Mind you, perhaps the lack of outgoing calls recently could be attributed to the fact the park has been closed for the season and the jammed coin mechanism.
Bettis also noted that it is becoming a challenge to keep the phones operational, adding that not only are parts becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, as the companies which made them have gone out of business or retooled, but there is also a lack of skilled service people.
And as such, he said Telus' focus is to keep the remaining payphones in areas with a lack of reliable cellphone coverage in service, such as the route to Jasper.
"It is a bittersweet moment for us. It is truly a generation legacy that we would like to support, but it has reached its end in terms of usefulness," he said, adding that the Telus Friendly Future Foundation will be donating $1,000 to a charitable organization in the area.
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
