ACT I (1890s–1950s)
Bell and beginnings
Spun off from Bell Telephone in 1895, the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Co. is established to handle phone production. Over the years, it expands its product line to include a range of household items, from kettles to toasters to washing machines.
Marc Lavoie (product manager): My dad worked at Northern, as it was called then, starting back in the forties after the war. We had a Northern Electric fridge, a Northern Electric stove, a Northern Electric TV, all bought from the company store where you could get anything you needed. Once, he came home with a few old crank telephones, authentic Northern products from the 1890s, which he saved from being thrown in the dumpster; I still have two of them. When I eventually got a job offer myself from Northern, he told me, “Don’t even think about it. Just say yes.”
Andy Moreau (installer): I started in 1955 for Northern Electric as a trainee. Back then, Northern wasn’t just making telecommunications equipment; it had been making things like radios called Baby Champs. Know what I made when I started? Seventy-one cents an hour, which at the time was one of the best salaries in Quebec. Any time the government had a grant for something, I wasn’t eligible, because I was making too much money.
Frank Mills (engineer/manager): Northern Electric used to be in the business of manufacturing products developed by Western Electric in the States. All they were doing was changing the title, taking out “Western Electric” and putting in “Northern Electric.” Then the Americans asked Western to drop all associations with foreign companies [an anti-trust suit in the United States forced Western Electric to sell its stake in Northern Electric to Bell Canada], which included poor old Northern. That put Northern’s feet to the flames, to figure out what to do after being cut off. That’s when the R&D division was formed.
Gordon Thompson (engineer): I was hired in 1947 in the electronics department, and when we were left without any design authority coming from the States, we had to fly on our own. Wow! What an opportunity for a hotshot engineer right out of university. I thought I knew it all, and now I had the chance to prove it. It was an incredible period to be designing equipment for TV and radio stations, which were expanding so fast at the time. With Western Electric dropping out, we had to stand up, take the bat and hit the ball out of the stadium—which we managed to do.
AM: With Northern, you had two families. You had your co-workers during the week, wherever you happened to be, and then you had your other family when you came home. You had to stick together. I remember living in the Arctic, installing an early-warning radar system in the 1950s at the height of the Cold War. Living in a tent in minus-50-degree weather for four years, in places like Frobisher Bay and Cape Dyer, is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Ken Lyons (project manager): Northern’s products were almost too good. People would buy them, and then never have any problems. I help manage a telecommunications museum, and one of the oldest pieces we have is an old Northern Electric phone from 1910, with a hand crank on the side. You can still make calls on it. Even the cord is in good shape. The culture of the company was to make products that were designed properly, that worked properly, and that lasted. I go to the museum every Wednesday, to remember what Nortel used to be.
ACT II (1960s–1970s)
Northern comes into its own
Countless countries come to Northern to establish their telecom systems. Its R&D team takes shape, and starts making advances that will become industry standard—particularly once the subsidiary Bell Northern Research is established in 1971. In foreseeing a digital world before almost any other company, Northern comes to dominate the field.
Gilles Dumouchel (installer): I still remember when I started: Dec. 13, 1965. It was a great day, and you couldn’t ask for a better company. We were always well paid and well trained, right up to when I retired in 2000, when it was like the Roman Empire. At the beginning I was paid $1.65 an hour. I had three boys, and with my weekly paycheque we were able to pay the rent, buy groceries and order chicken on Friday nights.
