Founders of British Columbia

Reprinted from "Crown Jewels of the Wire", May 2001, page 19

Robert Burns McMicking

Robert Burns McMicking was the man who brought the first public telephone service to British Columbia making Victoria the third city in Canada to enjoy the discovery.

He was of Scottish descent but he was born in Queenston, Ontario where his father also was born. The young McMicking was barely 18 when he joined the Overlanders, the pioneers who pushed their way overland to the west coast in 1862, seeking Cariboo gold.

They traveled with saddle horses, mules, oxen and afoot -- and eventually the descended the waterways of B.C. by raft enduring hardships of the grimmest nature. 

McMicking found the mines closing for the winter and he went on to New Westminster. While there he was recruited by the Collins Overland Telegraph Company which then was stringing its line across northern B. C. with the aim of reaching Asia and Europe via the Bering Strait. But the project was abandoned when a cable was successfully laid across the Atlantic.

McMicking remained as company agent at Quesnel, then moved to Yale where he married and soon transferred to Victoria to take charge of the Western Union Telegraph Office.

Here in 1878 he introduced the telephone, installing one set in his home, another in his office and a third in a newspaper office. This led to the formation in 1880 of Victoria and Esquimalt Telephone Company which today is the B.C. Telephone Company. He was manager until his retirement in 1914.

While in Victoria he served as a school trustee and an alderman and was a prominent Mason. In 1881 he was instrumental in the creation of B.C.'s first electric fire alarm system and in the creation of the first street lighting system in the city.

He died in Victoria in November 1915 and a plaque was erected there in his memory in St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church.

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The above article is from a newspaper column entitled "Founders of British Columbia" which was sent in by Larrin Wanechek. Source and date of publication is not known. The following article pinpoints McMicking's work in lighting the city of Victoria and comes from Electrical News and Engineering -- June 15, 1941 which was contributed by Hugh Barbour. 

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FIRST ELECTRIC LIGHTING

The story of electricity as a public utility on the west coast of British Columbia covers the surprisingly long period of 58 years, beginning in June, 1883, when the mayor and council of the City of Victoria, Vancouver Island, signed an agreement with Robert Burns McMicking, under the terms of which he undertook to construct in three areas of the city lights with an illuminating power equal in the aggregate to fifty-thousand candles. 

McMicking, who is best now remembered locally as one of the Overlanders of '62, probably had more experience with electricity than anyone else in British Columbia.

This installation called for the erection of three 150-foot masts, each carrying four or five double arc lamps and were expected to light the whole of the more thickly populated parts of the city. The agreement was confirmed by bylaw in July, 1883, and the installation was ready for service in the following December.

The system, according to the annual report of Mayor Redfern, in 1884, and which had been in use about three weeks, was working very satisfactorily. Power was supplied by a 25 hp steam engine driving two Brush dynamos.

However, things do not seem to have been quite so satisfactory a year later. It was necessary to spend $22,000 on rebuilding and additions. When this work was completed, lighting masts were located at 29 points as against the original three.

In 1887, Mayor Fell admitted (apparently in his annual report) that the best the city could do about the lighting was "to make the best of a bad bargain." He also seems to have expressed the opinion that while electricity undoubtedly was the light of tomorrow, it was still too much of an experiment for small communities. Some further changes were made about this time and the system carried on until 1891 when citizens defeated a bylaw calling for an expenditure of $50,000 for improvements.

McMicking, however, was not daunted by this partial failure and took a prominent part in organizing the Victoria Electric Illuminating Company. This company had the distinction of being the first public incandescent lighting system in Canada. Electric current was generated by an Edison dynamo driven by a 50 hp steam engine. The plant was rated as having a capacity of 400 16-candle power lamps.

With this additional plant in operation, Victoria's electric lightning facilities were fairly complete -- lights for streets, business establishments and homes being available.