Aliant closes doors to New Glasgow office

New Glasgow - As Michele Ferguson handed in her keycard and walked downstairs and out the door for the final time, she couldn't help but feel like it was the end of an era.
The Westville resident is one of the 49 Aliant employees affected by the closure of the New Glasgow office, which shut its doors for good on Friday. For the past 19 years, she was an operator, but now, that service will no longer be offered at all in Nova Scotia - instead, it will be routed through New Brunswick.
"It's a sad day," Ferguson said. "It was hard walking down those stairs and out the door."
Most of the employees are now out of work. Only four people went to St. John, NB for operational service, while five people from the business office went to Halifax.
Marie Bowden is one of the people who opted to retire.
"I'm lucky, I can retire, but I worry about the people left behind," she says. "I hope they'll be fine. I know they will be, but you hope for the best for them."
The workers were told in August that the New Glasgow location was shutting down, leading to what Bowden can only describe as "four months of hell."
"They just dragged it out, we had to get through Christmas like this," she said. "It took me months even to see a financial planner because of it. You'd go into work and it would be all you'd talk about - you'd have to go home and de-stress."
It's a job Bowden will miss - particularly seeing her coworkers every day. She started working at Aliant in 1974, right out of school.
"I started on the switchboard - we were still plugging cords in to answer calls," she said. "We went through a lot of changes with technology, going from manual to computers."
The company has a long history here - there are pictures dating back to 1905 on Jury Street in New Glasgow, but the company history actually goes back to 1896. It's something the community will miss, says Bowden.
"It's sad so much of the business is gone to bigger cities. The personal touch is gone, and the customer is definitely going to miss it," Bowden added.
The women and men that answered the calls for the operator did much more than simply looking up phone numbers, says Ferguson. They'd often go the extra mile, doing whatever they had to do to ensure their customers were able to connect with the people they needed to.
But they did have some funny calls as well, she added with a chuckle.
"One time I had a man call and ask me how to make French toast. It was his anniversary and he wanted to make it for his wife, so I told him how," Ferguson said. "We'd get calls asking us how long to leave the turkey in - lots of cooking calls. Once I had someone call and ask me how to fix a carburetor in a car. I said, 'goodness, I have no idea,' and they asked, 'aren't you information?' Not that kind of information though!"
And then there were the sad calls they received, said Bowden.
"We'd talk to them, try to talk them through their problems. Those are the calls where you hope some of what you're saying gets through," Bowden said.