Morinville’s last payphone will be hanging up for good this April, town council has learned — and the town’s museum hopes to add it to their collection.
As part of its consent agenda, Morinville council accepted a letter from Andy Rasimas of WiMacTel Canada Inc. to Mayor Simon Boersma during its Feb. 8 meeting.
The letter, dated Jan. 24, stated that the company will remove Morinville’s last payphone on or after April 5, on behalf of Telus Communications due to a decline in use.
The payphone in question is located at the Petro-Canada (formerly Tempo) gas station southwest of 100th Street and 95th Avenue.
Paid phone service came to Morinville just five years after the community was established, said Musée Morinville Museum co-ordinator Donna Garrett.
“When Father Morin came out with the settlers, he brought with him telephone lines,” she explained, which by 1896 had been strung up along tamarack poles to connect to a phone in St. Albert.
Garrett said the Morinville phone, likely a combination telephone/telegraph, was housed in what is now the rectory building of the former St. Jean Baptiste Church. The phone started operations on Oct. 29, 1896, with calls costing 20 cents per message.
The Gazette was unable to determine when the first coin-operated payphone arrived in Morinville. The first such phone in Edmonton arrived in March 1899, reports historian Tony Cashman.
Garrett said the museum is definitely interested in adding the payphone to its collection, where it will fit in with the other historic telephones it has on display.
St. Albert is set to lose its last payphone about a week before Morinville on March 25. Telus spokesperson Chelsey Rajzer said Alberta had about 700 active Telus payphones as of late January.
Morinville Mayor Simon Boersma said the last time he used a payphone was back in high school when he had to make a long-distance collect call to his mother in Legal from Lethbridge.
“When you come from a family of eight and you don’t have a vehicle, Mom is the bus driver,” he joked.
Boersma said he is confident the town’s payphone is no longer needed — phones are easy to find in Morinville, and additional supports are available through the town’s library and Family and Community Support Services.
“It’s a great artifact for us to maybe hold onto down the road.”
Questions on the payphone’s removal should go to WiMacTel Canada at 1-844-825-8481.
