On 14 February 1916, on the occasion of a banquet held by the
Bell Telephone Company of Canada in Montréal, a call was placed
to Vancouver - the first trans-Canadian telephone call, albeit
routed through large parts of the United States. It would be
another 16 years before such a call using all-Canadian lines
would be made. In the 1920s the Prairie provinces (Alberta,
Saskatchewan, and Manitoba) created their own telephone
companies, shrinking Bell's influence somewhat and precipitating
the creation of alliances to ensure the provision of coast-to-
coast telephone service through a series of toll and
collaboration agreements. The first such alliance was the
Telephone Association of Canada, which was formed in the early
1920s and which was followed by the Trans-Canada Telephone
System (TCTS) in 1931. The purpose of the TCTS was to ensure the
creation and maintenance of a seamless, coast-to-coast telephone
system. TCTS was eventually followed by the Stentor Alliance in
1992. Stentor was broken up by the end of 1