OUR CANADIAN BROTHERS ON PLANET MARS
The following list of Canadian operators who lived, flourished and
passed away, either in this country or in Canada, has been furnished by
John Fletcher, superintendent Canadian Pacific Railroad Telegraph, with
the suggestion that they be admitted into the sacred precincts of the
Pleiades Club. The list embraces some well known and revered names:
Sam Garvey, Manager Dominion Telegraph Company, Montreal, in the
seventies; S. E. Gibbs, chief operator at Toronto, Dominion Telegraph
Company, in the seventies; Jim Ingram, of Ogdensburg, N. Y., manager
for a number of years of the Montreal Telegraph Company there,
succeeding John Henderson in the early seventies; John Murray, manager
of the Montreal Telegraph Company at Brockville, Ont., in the seventies
and later in charge of the District Telegraph Company at Montreal;
Alexander McNaughton, of the old Montreal Telegraph force in the
seventies and eighties; Larry Longmore of the same company and of the
same time; James Dakers, secretary of the old Montreal Company, whose
presence in the operating room was a constant lesson in the virtue
of economy; Alexander Grant, superintendent of the Montreal Company,
a fine man and greatly respected; Thomas Elwood, superintendent of
the Dominion Telegraph Company at Toronto, a fine operator and a man
beloved by all who knew him; P. Snyder, an old Dominion star and in
later life superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company’s
Telegraph at St. John, N. B.; Hiram Pingle, who made his reputation at
the House of Commons in the seventies as a very fast sender, later
superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Railroad at Toronto; A. W.
Barber succeeded Pingle as superintendent at Toronto and he, too, some
years ago, went over to the silent majority; Jonas Oliver, well known
in western Canada around 1890 to 1905, a self-educated Icelander, fine
operator (“Little Skratti Icelandic” was his nickname); David J. Duff,
one of the best known of the younger generation of Canadian operators,
died 1905, at Winnipeg, aged twenty-eight; was a great favorite, not
only in his native city of Winnipeg, but in Chicago, where he had
worked for several years, in Philadelphia, New York and at Palm Beach,
Fla.; Cleo C. Young, home town, McAlester, Okla., died in Winnipeg,
1913, a first class operator, aged thirty-one; Charles L. Hallett,
died in Winnipeg recently, had been in the insurance business for the
past twelve years, formerly circuit manager at Fort William, aged
fifty-four years; Winnipeg is such a healthy place there are not many
applicants for membership in the Pleiades Club; Orville A. Glenn, one
of Winnipeg’s best known stars, died 1911, aged thirty-seven years. At
time of his death he was a member of the grain exchange and doing a
lucrative brokerage business; Joseph Quelch, a first class telegrapher
and at one time manager of the Dominion Telegraph Company at Montreal
in the seventies. He was one of the finest boys one could wish to see;
Samuel Ritchie was another of the old Dominion Telegraph boys and was
strictly first class; William Duchesmeau, at one time manager for the
Canadian Pacific Railroad at Quebec, a fine operator and a good man;
John McKenzie, a chief operator for the old Montreal Telegraph Company
about the same time, well liked by all; James Poustie, superintendent
of construction and maintenance for the old Montreal Telegraph Company;
Edward Flanagan, of Prescott, Ont., who died in Utah in the eighties, a
fine operator; Robert Empey and Jack Wolfenden, two Canucks, who died
in the Far West, both stars; the former would be employed as a comic
sketch artist on some metropolitan journal if he were alive today; A.
Laurie, a Montreal boy, a fine operator who died in Vancouver in the
nineties; Samuel MacIntosh, manager for the Canadian Pacific Railroad
at New Westminster in 1887 and later in the insurance business, died
there in the nineties; William Fraser, night chief at Vancouver for
a number of years, has been in British Honduras and in the Southern
States prior to 1890; George Scott, of the Pacific Cable Board,
Vancouver, gilt edged, all around, first class man, was in the South
African war; J. H. Giffen, lately chief operator at Moose Jaw for the
Canadian Pacific Railroad, died in 1915.