Bonaventure metro station had a bunch.

Now where I live, up in Saguenay, the only payphones I know of are inside the nearest hospital, there are 4 in there, the free one in the ER waiting room having been disabled “for sanitary reasons”, despite everyone who’s inside an hospital these days, especially a waiting room is gonna be overwashing their hands.

The 2 outdoor ones I knew of, one at the nearest convenience store, which is much more popular than its size in quantity, had the phone booth outside removed when they bought a couple apartment buildings in the back, tore down them too, because they are expanding, dramatically.

The other one was where an old Tim Horton’s used to be, they tore down the building eventually but the phone booth remained.

I hate smartphones, they are tracking devices more than anything. I love desktops and am fine with laptops. I don’t need more than my music-lover smartphone with 32gb of space for mp3, it’s a Phillips so it sounds great and I can remove the battery and sim card from it, the only thing that I got with it that’s a bit advanced is sms lol.

Payphones can be lifesavers. The mountain highway from my town to Quebec City used to have red signs along the way saying “S.O.S.” with the icon of a phone saying 10km 5km then one with an arrow pointing to the payphone. Now that the whole highway has been turned into a 4-lane separated highway, they got rid of them all. Except at the service point in the middle of the road where there’s a gas station, restaurant and convenience store. There’s 2(!) phone booths next to another outside and another one inside the gas station.

It’s a shame when things like smartphone service can be cut off suddenly for many reasons. It’s no different as wifi internet at this point. Hardlines outside for the public is good. Once in 2006 I would have slept outside had I have no change on me to call again and again at my friend’s student apartment/dorm (it’s apartments exclusively for students of the university he went to), because I would have had to sleep outside in downtown Montreal. I was pretty new in town and the subway was shutdown (was past 1:15 am) and I was still unfamiliar with night buses, had no way to get home.

Some crimes are resolved thanks to 911 calls made on payphones. They shouldn’t be removing them more than they have now.

I did a quick Streetview tour of Montreal, looking for the phone booths seen in the photos I got in 2013. Streetview imagery is current as of late 2018 for most of Montreal. I’d say roughly ½ of the outdoor payphones and phone booths I photographed are gone. I know that’s no authoritative analysis but from where I’m sitting it’s the best I can do 🙂