There are roughly 2,000 payphones in Montreal. It’s impossible not to notice them. It’s like seeing an old mustang on the street and harkening back to a time when cars had better designs. What once was a normal sighting now stirs nostalgia.
The first working payphone was installed in Hartford, Connecticut in 1889. The story goes that William Gray, the son of Scottish immigrants, was inspired to create the payphone when his boss or neighbour (stories vary) refused to let him use their phone to call the doctor for his ailing wife. If only there was a public phone he could use!
The humble payphone became a necessity as cities grew and people began to travel. If you’re of a certain age, you have made a collect call when travelling or stood in a line outside a phone booth, waiting for someone to finish their call.
Why has Montreal retained its payphones when most other cities in Canada have not? Every metro station in the city has payphones, and there are still phone booths on the streets. It’s as if, for the most part, a vandalism truce has been agreed upon. A call today costs .50 cents. Compared to the inflationary rise of costs of other things, that’s not bad.
I would like to believe the payphones continue to exist because the city administrators care about those who live with economic hardships. Not everyone carries a charged smartphone in their pocket. The infrastructure already exists, so there’s no reason to get rid of them entirely.
And in an emergency, the payphone may be the lifeline we all turn to, as its operation isn’t dependent on electricity.