In 1846, the first telegraph message in Canada was sent between Toronto and Hamilton — just two years after Samuel Morse sent the now-immortal words “What hath God wrought” across the first North American telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore.
While the Canadian message was largely functional, including the inquiry, “Who is in the office”, it nonetheless signalled Canada’s place as one of the leading countries of the world in terms of telegraph adoption.
These days, the telegraph has been supplanted by more modern technologies, many of which evolved from it. Extensive research has been conducted on the history of the telegraph in Canada, but Nnamdi Nnake, a PhD candidate in the Department of History, points out that there’s a notable gap in that history — and it’s one that he’s planning to fill in.
“Much of the work on the history of the telegraph in Canada has either emphasized the technology itself, analyzed the contents of the messages conveyed, or focused on the inventors,” he says. “These are themes with which scholars are already familiar.”
He goes on to explain that “the contributions of Black telegraph operators and technicians to the growth of the network is almost completely obscured.”
In February 2026, Nnamdi received the Black and African Canadian Scientific and Technological Innovations Fellowship (BACSTI) from Ingenium, the organization that oversees three national science-focused museums in Ottawa, as well as Canada’s national scientific and technological collection of archival items and artifacts.
The fellowship provides funding for full- and part-time graduate students to undertake a research study related to the study of historical or contemporary connections between Black and African Canadians and science and innovation.
Nnake is expanding the scope of his current research on the history of the telegraph in Nigeria to examine the work of Black telegraph operators in Canada. Nnamdi’s fellowship with Ingenium will run from May until August 2026.
One of the first things he found out was that Lincoln Alexander, Canada’s first Black MP, federal cabinet minister and Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, was a telegraphist (also called a radio or wireless operator) in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II but only attained that position after the RCAF lifted enlistment restrictions in 1942, allowing Black Canadians to join.
Nnake suspects this is a tip of the iceberg and recognizes that a lot of digging is required to learn more — but information about Black telegraph operators isn’t easy to come by. That’s where he thinks Ingenium’s collection can help: With more than two million archival items and more than 150,000 objects, Nnake is hoping to make use of archival trade literature, amateur radio publications, advertisements and supplementary sources to find pictures or other relevant information that can be used to piece together stories of Black Canadians working in telegraphy.
“A lot of times, when we think about communications technology and the people who work on it, we tend to focus on the people working on the front lines, the ones whom the public see, or who are represented in newspaper advertisements, on TV, or radio,” Nnake explains.
“We don’t think about those who fix the wires when they break, or who climb the poles to maintain the communications infrastructure – and there are opportunities to explore those roles as well.”
So it’s not only telegraph operators he’s interested in. There are also stories about Black telegraph mechanics and technicians, and he’s determined to tell those as well.
And, Nnake says, if the sources yield little or no valuable information on Black Canadian telegraph workers, the fellowship will have successfully emphasized the challenges of silences and erasures that visible minorities in Canada have endured in the past and present, as well as the risks of that silencing continuing in the future.
“I’m really excited about the lines of inquiry that my research is yielding — with Nigeria and Canada both being places that were colonized by the British, there are some interesting parallels to draw,” he says.
“The opportunity to look at what was going on with Canadian telegraphists will likely yield some new information that can help me better understand my PhD research, especially when it comes to answering questions about technological development in relation to human agency, state power, institutionalized racism and other forms of unjust domination.”