Built in 1878, Sandy Hill’s stately Laurier House housed two Canadian Prime Ministers — Sir Wilfrid Laurier and William Lyon Mackenzie King. At the time, there was no official residence for political leaders; that came after King’s death.
In his time there — from 1923 to 1950 — King famously held séances and made other attempts to speak to spirits. More pragmatically, he also made sure to stay in communication with the living with a list of phone numbers next to his bed. Who graced the list? The Ottawa Civic Hospital, of course! We were right up there with King’s barber, the Canadian Press, and his doctor.
The five-digit number King used dates from when switchboard operators manually managed calls coming in. Seven-digit numbers came about later in the 1950s, and the 10-digit number we now use came in 2006.
