MAIL & TELEPHONE

For many years, the Joe Rich mail was collected by residents at the Post office in the back of Four Corners Market in Rutland. Joe Richers driving to Rutland would pick up everybody’s mail and drop it into a very large box across the highway from the entrance to Weddell’s driveway close to the end of Dion’s Road. Residents of the valley sorted through all the mail in the box and just took their own and occasionally other person’s mail that they found particularly interesting. Jim Weddell remembers visiting neighbours and noticing that they had Weddells’ National Geographic Magazine which was clearly marked with Weddell’s name. When they were finished with it, they just returned it to the box and the Weddells got it a few days late. No one was particularly concerned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1946 Stuart Weddell at the mail box

Later, the Post office moved out of the Four Corners Market to its present location on Rutland Road and some residents got mail boxes in the new building. In the 1970s, banks of mail boxes were set up beside the highway and a mail lady delivered Joe Rich mail by car to resident’s personal boxes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Recently, this delivery has become daily and even includes small parcels.

(see Power Line, How Power Came to Joe Rich and Demitors)

Telephone service was established in Joe Rich in 1965 at the same time and on the same poles as West Kootenay’s power service.

At first, Joe Rich telephones were organized in party lines of eight homes. Each home had a different number of rings and when the ring indicated a call for a specific household, those persons just pushed a button on the bottom of their phone and were connected to the caller. Gert Weddell remembers when community meetings could be held over the telephone by simply getting everyone to go to their telephone at the same time. Later, the party lines were reduced in size and finally all phone lines became private with only one household per line.

For years, there were ‘Fire Phones’. Six members of the Volunteer Fire Department were automatically rung when a fire occurred in the valley. It was then their responsibility to notify the other members of the Fire Department that they were needed.

Recently, several new innovations have occurred in the phone service. It is now possible for many of the Joe Rich residents to sign onto ADSL, a rapid internet hook-up for their computers operated by Telus, the telephone company. The phone lines to Big White, now a major village, pass through Joe Rich and these are gradually being replaced with fibre-optic cables which will run on the same new large poles as the electric power.