During the second half of the 19th century, two men did much to make Owen Sound an up-to-date town. The 1870s marked the beginning of a period of energetic expansion led by two dynamic entrepreneurs – S. Johnstone Parker and Richard Notter.
Shortly after Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone in Brantford, Notter and Parker began their own telephone company in Owen Sound. It was located in a back room of the second floor of a building at 878 2nd Avenue East, next door to Parker’s drug store.
Due to the primitive nature of the operation, telephone service could not be extended to private homes. Instead, wires were strung to about twenty businesses located downtown in the commercial section of Owen Sound. Each of the subscribers had storage batteries that powered the telephone in each location.
In 1884, a telephone system serving the whole community was begun. That year, the Owen Sound Telephone Company was formed with James McLauchlan as president and S. J. Parker as vice-president. The company’s headquarters remained on the second floor of the Parker Block with lines strung throughout the town.
A central telephone exchange was installed allowing residents to dial up an operator who put them in touch with whatever number they were calling. And in those early days, telephone numbers had only four digits. Owen Sound’s Telephone Company was, like many other municipal systems, eventually absorbed by the Bell Telephone Company.
But it all began with S. J. Parker and Richard Notter.
Originally aired January 18th 2016
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