File MS-0988 - British Columbia Telephone Co.

The first B.C. telephone company was the Victoria & Esquimalt Telephone Co., incorporated May 1880. On the mainland the earliest company was the New Westminster & Port Moody Telephone Co., which erected a line between the two communities in 1883. By 1886 it had expanded as the New Westminster & Burrard Inlet Telephone Co. to include the new City of Vancouver. Purchased by British interests in 1898, it changed its name to British Columbia Telephones Ltd. and expanded to include subsidiaries on Vancouver Island and in the BC interior. Ownership returned to B.C. in 1902 and the company became British Columbia Telephone Co. Limited two years later. Local owners of BC Tel sold the company to General Telephone and Electronics Corp of Chicago in 1927 and it was controlled by American owners thereafter. Telus Communication Inc. was created in 1998 from a merger of BC Telecom, owner of BC Tel, then Canada's second-largest telephone company, and Telus Corp, an Alberta telephone company. The new company, based in Burnaby, is one of the largest private-sector employers in B.C