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A numbers freak bemoans the 236 area code

July 29th, 2011 · 30 Comments

I love numbers. I remember my waitress number from my university days, “8,” because it was my favourite. I wasn’t surprised to hear later in life that it’s considered lucky to the Chinese.

One of my favourite memories of high school is my math teacher, Mr. Ryan (who encouraged me in math at a time when girls like me, even when good at it, tended to downplay their math skills), telling us about a famous mathematician who, hearing some 11-digit number on his deathbed, instantly recalled its square root or some such apocryphal thing. I related.

So naturally, I bond with telephone numbers that are both rhythmic (the last four digits of my land line, 6930, all multiples of 3) and meaningful. As a reporter, it was a thrill seeing numbers and knowing instantly what that told me about the person: 261/3/4/5/6 — Kerrisdale/Shaughnessy/Dunbar; 253/4/5 – the Republic of East Van; 681/2/4/5/7/8 – some single person in the West End.

And it was so helpful for finding people. Whenever I was looking for a school principal or a company president with a common last name, I’d call all the west side and West Van numbers (922/4/6) first. It was remarkably efficient.

Then came cellphones, which disconnected numbers from their geography. Argh. Then the 778 area code. So ugly, not something harmonious like 604 or 250. How can you have an area code with no zero? It’s unnatural.

And now 236, which is both ugly and probably is just going to be assigned randomly to people all over the region. Are the phone people trying to make me seasick?

The only fun I have any more is guessing, by the number, which cellphone provider people are using. Or, occasionally, I’ll get a call from someone who I know lives on the west side but who has a 322 or 321 landline number. Aha, migrants from southeast Vancouver who made good, I think.

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  • Joel

    I totally feel your pain. You are so right about 778. And now a 236? So we have that increasing feeling of rootlessness–none of us are grounded (or merely *located*) in any one place–just a messy web of signals floating somewhere in the atmosphere. Soul-sucking! (I now await charges of hyperbole. But I’m kind of rather serious.)

  • Tessa

    I like 236. But I also think the numbers 4 and 13 are just as good as any, really. 236 has a nice ring to it, it’s ascending and increasingly so. I like the way the 2 and the 6 point outward at the edges. I don’t know, really, it just sounds a lot nicer than 778 or 672, which is the next set of numbers reserved for BC. And maybe not as cool as 867, the area code for the territories, which spells TOP a the phone keypad.

    Either way, all this stuff is subjective. Chinese traditions consider 13 to be lucky, after all. In the end it’s all just random numbers.

  • gmgw

    Well, being a few months older than God (or maybe that’s just the way I feel these days), I look back with nostalgia to the old name-prefix phone numbers. Most larger cities had them; I guess the science of mnemonics was developing along textual rather than numeric paths back then. I only remember a few of the local prefixes, mostly because as a kid I associated them with where our local relatives and friends lived: CAstle (22-, Point Grey); REgent (73-, Kitsilano and Arbutus Ridge); MUtual (68-, the downtown peninsula); ALpine (25-, the east side); WAlnut (92- ,West Vancouver); and of course our own exchange, YUkon (98-, North Vancouver, preceded by YOrk). To this day, every time I call a cab I think of the sprightly Black Top Cabs radio jingle that went “Mutual 3-4567…”, even though they’ve long since changed the number. Hell, I’m so old I can remember when North Van phone numbers were only four digits long (eg: “York 8166”). These prefixes now seem like relics of a more civilized, manageable age. Anyone know when they vanished? I would guess, wildly, sometime in the mid-60s. Anyone recall any of the other local prefixes?
    gmgw

  • Stuart Mackinnon

    Amherst (26) for Kerrisdale and TRinity (87) for Fairview.

  • Morry

    Tatlow for the east end

  • Morry

    Alpine too

  • Jacob

    I think 778 is ugliest. Have you noticed that 236, 250 and 604 are all bus route numbers? Of course, we’ll all get used to it after 2 months.

  • David

    TAtlow was a a downtown exchange from the 6 digit era, in the late 50s/early 60s, when Vancouver upgraded to 7 digit phone numbers, an extra digit was inserted. so TAtlow, MArine, PAcific became MUtual 1, MUtual 4, MUtual 5 (give or take, not sure of actual numbers).. For years, North Star Recycling on Powell had two numbers painted on their building, a 6 digit MArine and a 7 digit MUtual..now painted over as their number is now in ALpine.

    even at my old rented house in Kits, up till 2005 there was a security sticker on the door, with two 6 digit phone numbers, one CEdar, one CHerry.

    Soon after Vancouver adopted 7 digit dialing, the phone companies encouraged identifying numbers with.. numbers, not words and numbers, not without opposition, google ” Anti-Digit Dialing League”… and of course TMI on wikepedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange_names

  • Tessa

    @Jacob
    I hadn’t even noticed that! Of course, I used to ride the 236 as a teenager, as my mother still lives along the bus route. That might play a part in my liking of the number.

  • gmgw

    Just remembered another one: FAirfax (32-), for what’s now (I think) called Fraserview. Thanks to the others who’ve responded. CEdar? CHerry?? Before even my time.
    gmgw

  • David

    MUtual, REgent, YUkon, WAlnut, CAstle HEmlock, CYpress, ALpine, all of our ‘classic’ 7 digit exchanges are from the “Officially Recommended Exchange Names”

    A scene from the PNE, 1940… how to use a dial phone… http://www.flickr.com/photos/69965333@N00/5989396229/ Anyone currently under 25 might also benefit from this : )

  • David

    gmgw… CEdar and CHerry gave way to REgent-x numbers, at about the same time YOrk numbers became YUkon-x in North Van… (maybe North Van to Kits was “Long Distance” in those days…. remember when long distance was a big deal?… Quiet kids..turn off the TV, it’s Long Distance!)

  • boohoo

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maid_%28Seinfeld%29

  • Julia

    FA (32) was Fraser

  • Roger Kemble

    “The time has come the lobster said to talk of many things.

    Of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings.

    . . . and god help us, telephone numbers

  • lizzie

    North Van also had Willow, which disappeared along with York into Yukon, in the early 60’s, I think. York & Willow didn’t seem to be geographically separated – we were York, but my friend at the end of the street was Willow; I think our next door neighbours were, too.
    There were no dial phones when I was a kid in North Van (early 50’s). We still had to verbally give the number to a live operator. Our number in North Va was “North” with 4 digits & a letter at the end.
    The Trinity exchange included Cedar Cottage; before Trinity, it was Fairmont – when I was very little, my grandparents’ number was “Fairmont 2610R” As a preschooler, I got to phone them pretty much every day. The letters probably had something to do with party lines. We were on a 2-party line in North Van till I was about 9, I think.

  • The Fourth Horseman

    @ Stuart MacKinnon #3

    Hey, there, AMherst was used in Oakridge, too!

    The funny thing, everyone can remember their child-hood phone number (drilled into us in case we were lost, kidnapped or going to be late for dinner).

    I still use variations of those digits for all my security needs, though now they tend to be of the online and financial kind.

    @Roger Kemble. Oh,for heaven’s sake Rog, it’s a holiday weekend and the dog days of summer.

    So apt that we indulge in a little harmless fun. Besides, we will all be gearing up our moral outrage, soon enough, as the civic election gets underway in earnest.

    😉

    Happy BC Weekend, one and all.

  • golhanster

    Great story, great posts

    hg

  • Roger Kemble

    TFH @ #16

    Q: “What do you get if you divide the cirucmference of a jack-o-lantern by its diameter?”

    A: “Pumpkin Pi!”

    I’ll be on my sail bote mid August, in FC . . . gimme a call . . .

  • Bill Lee

    Two hundred [and] thirty-six 236 = 22·59, Mertens function returns 0, nontotient, happy, sum of twelve consecutive primes (3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41).

    236 ml. to one cup etc.

    One suspects the story was of G.H. Hardy visiting Srinivasa Ramanujan who was often very ill in England and saying that he had taken cab 1729, a dull number. But Ramanujan said no it was very interesting for….

  • Bill Lee

    HAstings.

    Glenburn, later split between ALpine and CYpress, the latter mainly in Burnaby, when they closed the old telephone operator exchange on Victoria Drive and Francis, and the old clapboard tower torn down for a parking lot for the present automated exchange north of the VanEast Cultural Centre.

    You might have a skim of the labour academic\s The Long Distance Feeling: A History of the Telecommunications Workers Union by Elaine Bernard ISBN 10: 0-919573-03-7 ISBN 13: 9780919573031 Publisher: New Star Books Publication Date: 1982

    With roaming numbers, people might not be even in the same country, let alone same province.

    And I remember a far off country where the numbers when from landline 3 digits from a central exchange, to 4 digits, to 5 without central manned exchange, to 7 to nowadays 11, all in the space of 15 years.
    My addressbook was being crossed out every couple of years.

  • David Hadaway

    @ Bill Lee

    Brilliant!

    I’ve also noticed that, unlike 604, both 778 and 236 when divided by the sum of their integers (22 and 11 respectively) give a recurring fraction, 363636.. in the first case and 454545.. in the second.

    I’d also like to add that I do, in fact, have a life and just happened to look at this article between getting in from my girlfriend’s and going out again for the evening!

  • Morry

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TENproject/message/777

  • David Hadaway

    Thinks.. did I write integers or digits? Oh dear!

  • Michael Geller

    I used to think that to get a ‘good’ phone number…eg 604 123 1234, you had to know someone at ‘the phone company’. However, recently I was told that there’s another, more effective way. I’m sure many Fabula readers know the answer.

  • gmgw

    @Michael Geller #24:
    I don’t know, but I’ll bet it involves spending money.
    gmgw

  • rf

    lets just call 236 a “BEN” code.

  • The Fourth Horseman

    @Roger Kemble #18

    Bada bing! Loved it!

    Keep floating our boats, Rog. And have fun on yours…

  • Peter

    For West Vancouver in the late fifties and early sixties, I remember a Hollyburn exchange (for the Ambleside area, I believe), as well as the Walnut mentioned above.

  • Stephen Schramm

    I have been trying to find a map or listing of the neighborhoods associated with the 3 numbers after the area code called the NXX number ie 604-733 is Kits. This was in every phone book until the late 1990s when you had to pay long distance between places like West Van and Whiterock. Anyone?