Hugh Neilson 1844 - 1938

Telephone Pioneer

Hugh Neilson was born in Alloa (same hometown as George Brown), Scotland, and came to Canada in 1851. The sailing took 53 days. Neilson settled first in southwestern Ontario. That’s where he learned telegraphy with his father and and at 17 he became an operator. He moved to Toronto in 1869.

Neilson was one of the four founders of the Telephone Despatch Company and its first Manager. It was the first company to provide pioneer telephone services in Toronto.

He had one of the first four telephones installed in his beautiful Gothic Revival house (built in 1877) on Carlton Street. It was only three years after Alexander Graham Bell had invented the telephone and only one year after the first (Brantford-Paris) long distance phone call.

The Telephone Despatch Company’s first List of Subscribers (a very thin “phonebook”) was published in 1879. It counted 56 customers, including the four founders. The List didn’t give phone numbers. To make a call, you had to contact the operator who would relay the call to another customer who needed to be clearly identified. It was quite the operation. Customers were also connected via party lines with six to eight customers per line.

Among the first businesses “connected” by phone were merchants like the Robert Walker’s Golden Lion Store (dry goods) on King Street, a druggist at Yonge and Queen, the Telegram and the Globe newspapers, a restaurant on Yonge Street, the Grand Trunk Railway office, the Queen’s Hotel (predecessor of the Royal York Hotel), and a few more.

In 1881, the Telephone Despatch Company was taken over by the Bell Telephone Company. By that time, the company had 200 subscribers. Neilson was kept as the Manager. When he retired in 1896, he became the first pensioner at Bell.

Neilson had also other interests. He lived a very active life and loved the outdoors and photography. He was a founding member of the Toronto Canoe Club and of the Toronto Camera Club. Neilson was also the first secretary of the Muskoka Lakes Association. He also travelled the world extensively, even in his old age.

Hugh Neilson died at age 93 in 1938. At the time of his death, he was the longest continuous telephone subscriber in the world.  He was buried in the Toronto Necropolis.

His daughter, pioneering Toronto Public Health Nurse Janet Neilson, grew up in the Carlton Street house. The story doesn’t say how much time she spent on the phone.