Dear Editor:
For qualification purposes I will note my first full-time job was as lineman for Bell Telephone out of Guelph’s Campbell Road location in the spring of 1966. Our main job at the time was stringing high capacity (for the time) multi pair cable to accommodate heavy telephone usage throughout our area. TV cable at that time was also a relatively new advancement.
Since telephone cable of that era was almost solely copper conductor based, it was not completely unknown for “resourceful individuals” to save odd scraps of cable to convert to hard cash. However, it was rare and the era different in that most young people were ready to take on and value a job, even one that could be near to the most boring in nature.
Fast forward to our present decade, in which we see many unemployed – some that could surely hold a job to maintain body and soul, yet they find more and more reason not to work.
Up until COVID raised its ugly head it could be argued that many employers were forced to hire unfortunates ahead of homegrown workers. That situation changed in a heck of a hurry during the worst days of pandemic, so much so that employers were scratching for labourers wherever they could find them.
In the last six months it has become more than evident that people fit enough to “manhandle” (for any appreciable amount of the cable referred to, requires a strong back). More than evident you say? The writer and fellow Bell Telephone land-line subscribers on southeast side of Guelph are again, for the fourth time in three months, without land-line telephone service. During that three-month span the total duration without land line service for ourselves, is within a day or two of one complete month.
The majority of Bell Telephone subscribers fully realize that Bell can not watch all of its lines 24/7. We also are completely aware that a large sector of Ontario’s population has met with the cruel circumstances when gainful employment was simply not there for many, and that substance abuse often filled that void. Those two terrible situations can cause deterioration in any society.
Eke Gates,
Guelph/Eramosa