Last year Gilda Koenig, a potential donor, approached me at the
Salmon Arm Museum at RJ Haney Heritage Village with the offer of a
switchboard from the Salmon Arm Motor Hotel. I knew right away she was
talking about the MOHO - built in the 1960s – the landmark that replaced
the old hospital by Little Lake.
The potential donor was a retired Okanagan Telephone, BC Tel,
and Telus employee. She was living in Vernon and her switchboard was
taking too much space in her garage. She’d heard about the Montebello
project and wondered if we needed her artefact.
I was curious. I knew the artefact was too new and therefore
too recent to install in the Montebello’s telephone exchange but
decided, not being an expert, to seek out an authoritative opinion.
That’s when I called on Neil Sutcliffe. 
Neil has been a friend to the museum for more than a decade and
he does special things for the Curatorial Department. Most recently he
wired a set of portable telephones in The Train Stopped Here
exhibit. The phones had been used to communicate between points on CPR
lines – were heavy and old, the kind that was used prior to the time
when mobile radio systems were in common usage o the CPR. It was
important that the exhibit’s phones work. George Alison, the telephone
donor, wanted his collection to be a teaching collection, for gentle
hands-on learning.
Neil ordered the wire he needed, refashioned some “telephone”
poles we had on site, installed them, and made the train phones work. He
continues to maintain them. He is like that. If he installs sound
equipment, he is agreeable to getting the maintenance calls.
So when the switchboard donation opportunity came up, of course I called Neil.
“Could you look at this switchboard? It is in Vernon,” I told
him. Neil went down to Vernon to have a look at the switchboard and it
turned out to be a 'style' dating from the mid to late 1930s, even
though the actual unit was built around 1960. It was not ideal in
historical accuracy but was available and could be made to work with
more readily available 'period' telephones to make an operating system
for demonstration and educational purposes. Once the curator decided
that the switchboard would be suitable, Neil and Nigel Jones, a buddy
with a truck, made the trip south to bring it back.
“The switchboard is almost perfect,” Neil said. He promised me
that technology had not changed drastically between our first community
switchboard and this newer artefact. The two men brought the gift home
and Neil arranged storage, somewhere level, where he could get it in and
out easily, so he could work on its many electro-mechanical components.
“It has to work,” Neil said with a smile because he has a thing about things working that should.
Neil looked at my Telephone Exchange photo taken in 1914. He
wanted the exhibit designed so that the switchboard was two feet from
any wall. Just like in the photo. He wanted to be able to get in and
work on the modules in the back. Coincidentally, the 1914 set up in Rex
Lingford’s photograph allowed for a repairman too.
Neil and I discussed things that mattered to each of us. I told
Neil I wanted Haney’s carpenter to build a cabinet around the current
sixties cabinet. He wanted me to plan for wiring between the switchboard
and other phones in the dioramas in the building. I looked at the
telephone book from 1911. What businesses had phones?
I found five: EA Palmer’s Family Butcher Shop, the Bank of
Hamilton, McGuire’s General Merchants, the Observer, and the Pool Hall.
We don’t have that many telephones in the museum’s collection, but that
didn’t deter either Neil or this curator from planning. Eventually they
will be donated. All we have to do is to put a call out to the generous
residents of Salmon Arm.
Of course some of the telephones should be teaching artefacts,
demonstrable for gentle hands-on learning. That is where the exhibit
design and layout is important. Some telephones have to be hanging on
the walls in exhibits that allow for public access. That’s going to be
the challenge exhibit designer Cuyler Page will figure out.
So when a phone rings in one of the dioramas at the Montebello
Museum, will it be for you? Will you pick up the handset? What will you
find out?
Thank you, Neil, for finding ways to make the new exhibits in the Montebello engaging and interactive.