This advertisement appeared in the July 13, 1940 edition of Canadian Countryman. It was taken out by the Bell Telephone Company of Canada (now Bell Canada) to advertise “farm telephone service.” It was marketed to farmers as a cheap way of connecting them to their friends, neighbours, and markets. While telephone lines were slow to make their way to rural Canada, by the 1940s the technology and infrastructure had developed enough to begin to make it affordable and realistic for many rural households. Earlier in the century, Bell had ceded what they referred to as “Unprofitable rural territories” to independent local companies. During this period, however, and especially into the 1950s and 60s, Bell began buying up independent companies in Ontario and quickly became the predominant provider of telephone service.