Profiles of Insulatordom

Reprinted from "Crown Jewels of the Wire", September 1994, page 8

Robert Burns McMicking was the man who brought the first public telephone service to British Columbia making Victoria the third city in Canada to enjoy the discovery.

He was of Scottish descent, but he was born in Queenston, Ontario, where his father also was born. The young McMicking was barely 18 when he joined the Overlanders, the pioneers who pushed their way overland to the west coast in 1862, seeking Cariboo gold. They traveled with saddle horses, mules, oxen and afoot -- and eventually they descended the waterways of B.C. by raft enduring hardships of the grimmest nature. 

McMicking found the mines closing for the winter and he went on to New Westminster. While there he was recruited by the Collins Overland Telegraph Company which then was stringing its line across northern B.C. with the aim of reaching Asia and Europe via the Bering Strait. But the project was abandoned when a cable was successfully laid across the Atlantic. 

McMicking remained as company agent at Quesnel, then moved to Yale where he married and soon transferred to Victoria to take charge of the Western Union Telegraph Office.

Here in 1878 he introduced the telephone, installing one set in his home, another in his office and a third in a newspaper office. This led to the formation in 1880 of Victoria and Esquimalt Telephone Company which today is the B.C. Telephone Company. He was manager until his retirement in 1914.

While in Victoria he served as a school trustee and an alderman and was a prominent Mason. In 1881 he was instrumental in the creation of B.C.'s first electric fire alarm system and in the creation of the first street lighting system in the city.

He died in Victoria in November 1915 and a plaque was erected there in his memory in St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. 

(From an undated/unidentified newspaper clipping provided by Larrin Wanechek.)