The Montreal Telegraph Company was the first significant telegraph company in Canada. In 1847, early telegraph pioneer

Orrin S. Wood Orrin Squire Wood (December 14, 1817 – June 22, 1909) was one of the early pioneers of the telegraph industry in the United States and Canada. The brother-in-law of Ezra Cornell, who assisted Samuel Morse in construction of the Baltimore-Washing ...

was recruited to be president of the company, which rapidly established telegraph lines to Toronto and Quebec City from Montreal, and then New York by August 1847.(1 September 1906)
Orrin S. Wood and the Early Telegraph
''Telegraph Age'', p. 409Rens, Jean-Guy
Invisible Empire: A History of the Telecommunications Industry in Canada, 1845-1956
p. 11, 23 (2001) The company's operations grew to 1,900 miles of line during the 1850s, and to 12,400 miles of line by 1870.Wilson, Kevin G
Deregulating Telecommunications: U.S. and Canadian Telecommunications, 1840-1997
p. 26 (2000) Wood had technical expertise, but was not an established businessman in Canada, so

Hugh Allan Sir Hugh Allan (September 29, 1810 – December 9, 1882) was a Scottish-Canadian shipping magnate, financier and capitalist. By the time of his death, the Allan Shipping Line had become the largest privately owned shipping empire in the wor ...

became president in 1852, and Wood continued as superintendent. The creation of Dominion Telegraph Company in 1868 caused strong competition between the two companies, leading to a price war and decreased profits. Jay Gould's Great North Western Company merged with Dominion in 1881, clearly making the company its next target. Montreal yielded a 97-year lease of its lines to Great North Western in August 1881. After 1881, the company lost its dominant position, and was eventually integrated into Western Union.The Rise and Fall of the Montreal Telegraph Company
montrealtelegraphcompany.com (via archive.org, retrieved April 21, 2017)

References

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External links

montrealtelegraphcompany.com
Created by Laurentian University history department graduate students, available on archive.org Defunct telecommunications companies of Canada Telegraph companies Canadian companies established in 1847 Telecommunications companies established in 1847