Telecom Nation: Telecommunications, Computers, and Governments in Canada

Charles R. Crawford, a former associate professor of computer science at
York University, is a computer-programming and mathematics consultant.

According to the author, after the Second World War Canada had more
telephones per capita than almost anywhere else in the world. This study
begins at that point (1945) and describes the development of
telecommunications in Canada for the next 30 years. The field of
telecommunications started with telephone and telegraph and expanded to
include microwave, data transmission, satellites, and, of course,
computers. Part 1 discusses the contested environment of commissioners,
companies, and consumers in the period up to the mid-1960s. In this
period, Canadian public policy had to react to, or ignore, exceptional
technological development. Part 2 carries the story to the 1970s. This
period includes “the slow collapse of federal telecommunication
regulation,” “a concerted [but futile] attempt to create a strong
national communications policy,” and Ottawa’s ambitious attempt to
fuse computers and communications in a pre-Internet information highway.
The book has an appendix of statistical tables, notes for each chapter,
and a bibliography of primary and secondary source.

Telecom Nation is an effective antidote to the parade of boosterish
books on the telecom industry. As the author says in his introduction,
“[This period] will strike anyone familiar with the contemporary
configuration of the Internet as a strange episode from a distant
place.” In fact, Mussio does not present any overall thesis. He
describes his method as “historical,” using documents from public
and private archives as well as insights from secondary sources in
regulatory economics, political science, and law “without necessarily
imposing the theoretical constructs that often go with [these
insights.]” His well-written text mixes general facts with specific
anecdotes. My favorite of the latter concerns a member of the Board of
Transport Commissioners who had been making “an object of himself”
in Union Station, requiring the intervention of the station master; he
soon resigned and was made a lieutenant-governor.