Mr. Poustie is the pioneer telegraph line builder of Canada. He was engaged by the Montreal Telegraph Company shortly after its organization.
After the contractors had finished the line between Montreal and Toronto, all line extensions thereafter were under his personal supervision.
He would start early in the spring with gangs of linemen, equipped with tools and provisions, live under canvas during the building season and return in the fall to prepare for the next year’s operations. This continued on from one year to another until the whole country was covered with a network of wires.
In purchasing material Mr. Poustie was a shrewd and careful buyer, getting the very best to be had at the lowest figure. In hiring labor, while paying liberal wages, he took good care to receive in return a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage from his men. Though stern and exacting, he was not unkind. His gangs of men were chiefly French Canadians; he knew their language and could apply it forcibly, if not elegantly, when circumstances required it.
His men were devoted to him and worked like beavers. It is no exaggeration to say that owing to inherent shrewdness in handling his men and purchasing supplies the lines were constructed at half the cost of similar work in the United States; this fact the Company soon became cognizant of.
Finally the system became so extensive as to demand a division of labor and responsibility when foremen were placed in charge of important sections of the line, and Mr. Poustie directed operations from headquarters at Montreal and became General Superintendent of Construction.
This position he held for many years. At length he resigned to rest for a while. He is at present associated with R. G. Reid & Co., of Newfoundland, in their Montreal office.
Mr. Poustie is a man liberally endowed with good common sense, dislikes humbug or insincerity, a keen observer of men and possesses a retentive memory and a happy vein of dry caustic humor with a merry twinkle in his clear penetrating greyish blue eyes. He can relate many interesting tales generally, from a humorous point of view, in reference to his own varied experience, all of which are well worth listening to. He is still vigorous and hearty, and we hope has many years before him. Like Yorick, “A man of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”
