Nowadays there is nothing scandalous about young people having children before getting married … as a result we often see young kids preceding their white gowned mom down the aisle. When my parents got married it was different; my grandmother Valeda did not take care of me during the wedding, I was born a year after their marriage… my mother respected the norms of her time.
Nonetheless, I believed that my grandmother babysat me during my parents’ marriage because I spent the majority of my childhood with her in the beautiful big house, that burned down about the time I became an adolescent.
My grandmother was everything except a housewife; cooking, cleaning and everyday chores did not interest her too much. She was emancipated, elegant and distinguished. She was manager of the local telephone service and also supervised the teletype message centre of Bell Telephone. I was her first granddaughter and she was my godmother. That’s why I was at her place so often.
Sitting on her knees when I was 4 or 5, she taught me how to read and I learned a lot of things about life. Her and her employees’ work consisted of sitting in front of a switchboard; a magical panel filled with telephone numbers and very small holes under each and many long wires which served as curved transmission lines between subscribers. For the time of a message, a chat and a bit gossip a wire would connect Mrs Gagnon number 43 to Mrs Beaulieu at number 67; my magician granny made it all happen.
My grandmother used to call me her assistant. While sitting on her lap, my work consisted in pointing the numbers of Mrs Roussel and Mrs Therrien … on the switchboard. During my training I realized that it was possible to hear the conversations between subscribers and I asked my grandmother a very big favour: «grandmother, could I listen to what people are saying? » She gave me a lesson of life that I remembered.
[Grand-maman, Aunt Henriette & Aunt Louise]«You have my permission to listen but you must never reveal the conversations you hear»… she was trying to transmit her biggest quality: discretion. As she would say, the biggest pastime of people who have nothing to do is to talk about other people. I never forgot what I learned as her assistant.
Years later, she coordinated the telephone system of St. Alexander’s Hospital in the Escoumins. She worked there for many years. Guess what was my first summer vacation job when I was a student, Switchboard operator at the hospital. I repeated the little phrase that I had heard so many times «operator»
In telling this story I wish to salute all those who worked for my grandmother. I would like to name them but I am too afraid that I might forget someone. I must have been a pest for them sometimes but they were my idols… … xxx
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