La cite au bout du fil: Le telephone a Montreal de 1879 a 1930 (review)

La cité contributes significantly to our understanding of telephone communication in Montreal during the period of its inception - before 1930. The particular contribution of the book is its interest in technology, urban form, and communication. The telephone, in Poitras's view, is both a communication device and a social undertaking rendering possible the advent of the modern networked city.

Poitras espouses two views that set the parameters of her thinking. First, the implementation of new technology is very much a function of a particular social vision behind technology. Whoever has the vision sets the pace and/or the specific contours of innovation. Second, Poitras believes that the subject of communication matters a good deal to historical development. In the transition from walking to network city, the telephone played a central role in handling the flow of communication, just as, years later, the city autoroute would direct the flow of urban traffic. The telephone was a sine qua non of urban existence, on a par, in terms of influence, with other elements of urban infrastructure - street railways, street lighting, and water systems. The telephone allowed for physical dispersal but functional interaction between downtown and suburb, home and work place, shopper and store, husband and wife.

The book is divided into fifteen chapters. The organization of the material is thematic rather than chronological and there is considerable overlapping of theme from one chapter to the next. Therein lies the only serious structural weakness of this work. The early chapters set out the book's argument. The telephone utility is clearly identified as a corporate player with an urban vision that will leave an indelible imprint on the urban landscape. Some detail is offered on the context of town planning in Montreal, the apprehension with health catastrophe, the coming of parks and sewers. Chapter 3 offers a convincing scenario of the telegraph as modern precursor and midwife of telephone technology in Montreal. Case in point: subscribers of the Canadian District Telegraphy during the 1870s needed only to press a button in order to call a taxi, signal a fire alarm, or arrange for a pick-up by a messenger boy.

Chapters 4 and 5 document the formation of the Bell monopoly in Montreal that began in 1880. The characteristic social and ethnic bias of the Bell corporate and managerial elite is made plain: better service was provided in the downtown area, the uptown wards, and suburbs to the west. The French-speaking majority, more tenant than landowning, was viewed as having little potential for the company: 'The French do not and except to a very limited extent will not adopt the telephone.' In chapter 6 Poitras presents an overview of the two constituent eras in telephone technology: manual and automatic telephone switching. The advent of the new automatic switchboard technology would allow Bell to catch up with the incredible surge in demand during the 1920s.

These two well-presented interpretations, the biased corporate vision and the advent of automatic switching, serve as building blocks for the rest of the book. However, the fragmenting of the subsequent narrative into eight different chapters - one series discusses the management of supply and demand through planning, advertising, plant construction; a second series examines the relationship with municipal and federal regulatory bodies - makes for arduous reading. The thread of explanation is sometimes lost, but there is no denying the legitimacy of the argument: the relevance of communication to an understanding of modern urban civilization and the need to factor in attitudes and expectations that help frame a particular technological vision - in this case that of the private telephone utility.

In the course of her research, the author uncovered a few lesser-known gems of historical fact. In 1910 the government of...