В 1961 году Порт-ла-Прери перешла на всецифровой набор, что положило конец эпохе общих линий и приватизировало телефонные разговоры

Today, calling someone is as simple as picking up your cellphone and punching in a 10-digit number or pressing your contact's name. But there was a time when calling someone in Portage la Prairie meant doing something very different. From spinning a lever to dialing a rotary phone, the process has changed many times over the years. In 1961, that process was changing in a big way. One of those major changes came in November of that year, when all-number calling was introduced in Portage. The change may seem insignificant today, but at the time it represented a major shift in how people communicated. From party lines to private conversations Helping tell the story is the late Bill Stewin of Portage la Prairie, whose career with Manitoba's telephone system stretched from 1946 until 1983. "I started with the telephones in September of '46," Stewin said in the original CFRY interview. "They told me it was supposed to be a six-week job, and I was there for three months short of 37 years." By the time Stewin settled in Portage in 1952, he had already been involved in bringing telephone service to rural Manitoba. He also installed one of CFRY's earliest telephones, located in the northwest corner of the basement of the Portage Hotel. The Portage Hotel was a major downtown landmark. Built in 1905, the hotel was considered state-of-the-art for its time and originally had a telephone in each room. That building was destroyed by fire in 2006. Stewin installed countless telephones during his career. When asked how many, Stewin had this answer. "I haven't got a clue. I did it for quite a few years, I'll tell you. Sometimes from 12 to 15 a day, five days a week. And I did this for years, so you will have to do the math." The telephone system Stewin worked on was very different from what people in the Central Plains know today. Party lines were common, particularly in rural areas. "At that time, there were 12, 15 people to one party line," Stewin recalled. "In fact, one that I know of had 26 on it." That meant privacy was hard to come by. "Every time the phone rang, it was just a bunch of clicks. You had no privacy at all and anyone on the line could listen." A new way to dial As telephone use grew after the Second World War, telephone companies faced a problem: the existing systems using letters and numbers could not provide an unlimited supply of usable exchange prefixes. All-number calling was introduced to address that problem. Statistics Canada described the system in 1961 as a telephone numbering plan using seven figures instead of two letters and five figures. The change was being introduced in communities across Canada and the United States as telephone systems expanded. BCE's history of Canadian telephone numbers also identifies the early 1960s as the period when all-number calling became a new, uniform telephone numbering system in Canada and the United States. For Portage, the transition started on a Sunday morning in November 1961. According to the original CFRY feature, 4,175 telephones in the community were activated under the new system at that time. And unlike some technological changes, Stewin remembered little resistance. "No, they all wanted to get the newer ones." The change also eliminated some of the work associated with the older telephone equipment. Stewin recalled having to travel around the countryside to change batteries in telephones every fall and said people actually missed those annual visits. CFRY was still 7-6447 The transition to all-number calling didn't immediately mean Portage residents were dialing the same kind of numbers they would recognize today. For many years, local numbers remained shorter. If you wanted to call CFRY, for example, you dialed 7-6447. That detail is worth emphasizing because it shows just how much telephone numbering has changed during CFRY's lifetime. CFRY itself first went on the air Oct. 18, 1956, broadcasting at 1570 kHz with 250 watts. The station later moved to 920 kHz and increased its power. So when the telephone system was being modernized in 1961, CFRY was only five years old. It was still a relatively new voice in the community, and its telephone number was part of a communication system that was itself undergoing a major transformation. In fact for many years, a direct line to Winnipeg was a popular feature for listeners in the capital. The end of a social telephone culture The new system made calls easier and offered greater privacy. But it also changed something less tangible. The old party-line system had made the telephone a social instrument. People could hear someone else on the line. They might know who was calling simply by the way the telephone rang. Conversations could become shared community events. All-number calling helped move the telephone toward the individual communication tool we know today. And in many cases, it is quite rare for some people to even use their smart phones for the traditional type phone call. But the change in 1961 certainly made things more efficient. And it was another step toward the modern communications world. Related stories: Dialing through the decades: A lifetime in phones preserved by Portage collector Call or contact the radio station or PortageOnline The CFRY General Store For CFRY, the irony is that the station has spent 70 years helping Portage residents keep in touch with their community, even as the technology used to reach the station has changed dramatically. But the reason for calling hasn't. This is part of CFRY's "70 Years of News" series, looking back at the people, stories and changes that have shaped Portage la Prairie and the surrounding region.   With files from Chris Rennie's 50 Years of News feature that aired in 2006