As the country prepares for Canada Day, July 1 will hold a little extra significance for mobile device users as it marks 40 years since the first domestic cellphone call was made.
It was in 1985 when residents descended upon Nathan Phillips Square outside Toronto city hall to see former Toronto mayor Art Eggleton use a 10-pound cellular telephone to call then-mayor of Montreal Jean Drapeau.
“First of all, it was a big instrument — something like the size of the phones that some cars had,” Eggleton told CityNews during an interview ahead of the anniversary and steps away from where that call took place.
“We were celebrating our country’s birthday and this was a thing that talks about the science of communications, and I think people found it quite novel that I was able to talk to the mayor of Montreal.
The call happened on a network called Cantel and it was partly formed by Rogers Communications, the parent company of CityNews. Rogers representatives said the network handled around 100 calls a day. Fast-forward today, and they said the Rogers wireless network across Canada handles approximately 100 million daily.
The earliest devices were big enough to be carried with a shoulder strap or installed into a vehicle.
Toronto resident Jeff Horodyski opened a cellphone account with Rogers less than a week later. The electrician told CityNews his business was being hampered
“Back then, we were using pagers and running to a pay phone somewhere, and usually not getting through and then having to run back many times,” he told CityNews.
“We need to communicate with customers, suppliers. For me, electrical inspectors. There’s a lot of people we need to communicate with and, you know, we don’t have time to waste trying to find them.”
But the price of easier access wasn’t an affordable proposition.
“My first telephone with financing was $4,800. That was a lot of money back then, but it still paid for itself,” Horodyski said.
“It made us efficient … because, like, right away we were not wasting time. Time is money, and so I was keeping track of that as well to make sure that I didn’t make a wrong decision with that cellphone. And it was right away showing me that it was paying for itself.”
He said his old Novatel — something he called “a showstopper” — was mounted underneath the seat of his vehicle.
“All I had was just the receiver and the dial, the numbers, the keypad … it was a good phone — three watts of power, so it was pretty reliable.”
So who did Horodyski call right after getting the device? He said it was his wife, Liz, who worked in cellular telephone sales.
“Oh, she was excited. She was excited to put it mildly … we would talk every day on the phone,” he said.
Throughout the years, Horodyski faithfully upgraded his devices. After the interview, he showed past PalmPilot, Nokia and BlackBerry devices that he keeps as mementos. Forty years on, calls now come through on his smart watch.
“This makes me think of Dick Tracy,” he said.
When asked about when Eggleton became a regular cellphone user, he said it came when BlackBerry was around during his time as national defence minister during the Chretien government.
While reflecting on the past 40 years of what has become a technological cornerstone in Canada, Eggleton said he was in awe.
“I can’t figure out all of the operations of these smartphones. I’m techy enough to do that, but it’s changed everybody’s life. You can see it,” he said.
“I’m just amazed by the technological advances.”
