¢ollect ¢all — Canadian Payphone Scavenger Hunt

¢ollect ¢all

Canada Edition

1-888-995-8969 toll-free

DIAL 1-888-995-8969 from any payphone. Toll-free. That is the whole game. · ¢ollect ¢all — Thousands of Canadian payphones mapped. Some still work. We're as surprised as you are. · Ontario leads the country. Of course it does. · Claim every payphone in your city. Zack Morris would have done it already. · Ontario · BC · Québec — still out there, completely unbothered · Spotted in hospitals, campgrounds, Tim Hortons parking lots, and one very committed Esso station in Aldergrove · Nobody will call you back. That's fine. Leave a message anyway. · Dial 1-888-995-8969 from any payphone — it's free. So was MuchMusic in 1994. ·

How to Play

1Create a free account. Get a 6-digit Player ID. Become who you were always meant to be.

2Find a payphone on the map near you. Thousands mapped across Canada. They've been waiting.

3Go there. Dial 1-888-995-8969 to make your claim. Toll-free. The call costs you nothing. This whole game costs you nothing.

4Enter your Player ID, then leave a voicemail. Tell a joke, report from the field, or just say where you are. It goes on the Voicemails page for everyone to hear.

5 1st caller: 20 pts · 2nd: 10 · 3rd: 5 · everyone after: 1. Already claimed it? Call again anytime for 1 pt. Nobody leaves empty-handed.

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Submit a Payphone

Found a payphone we don't have? Somewhere in Canada there's a payphone nobody has thought about since 2003. You thought about it. Tell us where. An approved submission is 20 points and the claim is yours — your username on the pin and everything. One submission per phone, so a row of six is six submissions, which is 120 points, which is frankly showing off.

 Your Account

Player ID (optional)

You found it. The hard part is done. Create a free account to get a Player ID, earn points, and show up on the leaderboard. Thirty seconds. Less time than it took to find the payphone, probably.

 About the Payphone

Street Address

City

Province / Territory

Postal Code

Location Description

Status

Payphone's Own Number (printed on the phone)

Notes

National Leaderboard

Top payphone callers from coast to coast. Every point earned the old-fashioned way: by going outside, finding a payphone, and picking up the receiver. In the year 2026.

#	Caller	Calls	Points

Voicemails, Photos & Resources

Every message here was left on a real payphone somewhere in Canada. A hospital lobby, a transit platform, a Tim Hortons parking lot. Nobody is going to call back. People leave one anyway, and we love every one of them.

Recent Voicemails

The tape is blank. Someone has to be first. That someone could be you.
Find a payphone, dial 1-888-995-8969, and say something. There are worse legacies.

Community Photos

Payphone sightings submitted by callers across Canada

No photos yet. Be the first to document a Canadian payphone.

Find a phone on the map, visit it in real life, and upload a photo from its detail panel.

How to Leave a Voicemail

Nobody will call you back. That's fine. Leave a message anyway.

1Find a payphone on the map. Go there. In real life.

2Pick up the receiver. Dial 1-888-995-8969 — toll-free from the payphone.

3Enter your Player ID when prompted.

4Say something. Pretend it's your mom's answering machine in 1996 and you've got big news. Let yourself be weird about it.

Resources & Links

Payphone Directory

payphone-directory.org — The most comprehensive directory of working payphones in North America. Source of our Canadian data.

The Payphone Project

A photographic archive of payphones from around the world, including a dedicated Canadian gallery.

CRTC Communications Market Reports — Open Data

Official Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission data on payphone usage, decline, and telecommunications statistics in Canada.

In the News…

Save the payphones? Why one expert says they can't all disappear — CTV News A Vancouver man is mapping the city's remaining payphones. Here's why — CBC Vancouver's last pay phones continue to serve the community — Vancouver Sun Residents of this small B.C. community fought to keep their phone booth — and won — CBC Payphones still important in 2020 — despite their sorry state in Winnipeg's core — CBC Cost to use payphones in Atlantic Canada jumping to 50 cents, if you can find one — CBC This is what's happening to Toronto's public payphones — BlogTO Northwestel to remove payphones not used for more than a year — Cabin Radio The untapped power and potential of payphones — CBC Over 300 payphones still remain in Mississauga — insauga.com

FAQ

Questions we anticipated. And a few we probably should have anticipated sooner.

How do I play?

¢ollect ¢all is a Canadian payphone scavenger hunt. Here's how it works:

Find a payphone on the map near you.
Go there. In real life.
Dial 1-888-995-8969 — toll-free from the payphone to make your claim. That's it! The call costs you nothing. This whole game costs you nothing. We just need you to go outside.
Enter your 6-digit Player ID when prompted.
Leave a voicemail. Tell a joke, report from the field, or just say where you are and what the weather is doing. It goes on the Voicemails page for the whole community to hear.
Points count by caller, on each phone number: 20 to the first person who claims it, 10 to the second, 5 to the third, 1 to everyone after. Separately, calling a phone you have already claimed is 1 pt, every time — you can't climb the ladder against yourself. An approved submission is worth 20 too. Nobody leaves empty-handed.
Some spots have more than one phone. A subway station might have six, because nobody in 1997 was worried about overbuilding. Each phone counts separately — its own number, its own find, its own points.
Some spots lead to a patch of concrete where a payphone clearly used to be. Submit the form with whatever you find, one per phone. A phone that isn't there is still a result.

The ladder: first 4 different callers

A payphone outside a Tim Hortons

Marg gets there first+20

Sarah arrives later+10

Alex arrives after that+5

Anyone else, fifth onward+1

Going back: any time, any caller

A week later Marg calls again+1

Sarah goes back too+1

Marg was first and Sarah was second. Going back is 1 either way, whatever you placed. The phone is pleased to see them. The scoreboard nudges up one.

You can track your finds, climb the leaderboard, and add photos and texts to every payphone you call from. It's a whole thing. We didn't plan for it to be this much fun. Yet here we are.

How do you know which payphone I'm calling from?

Every payphone has its own phone number. When you call our toll-free line, we see the number you're dialling from and match it against our database of Canadian payphone numbers. The phone tells on itself, basically.

There are three payphones here. Do they all count?

Every payphone is worth claiming. Three phones means three numbers, which means three separate finds. Call them all — you're already standing there.

What if the payphone is already claimed?

Call anyway. Second caller gets 10 points, third gets 5, and everyone after that gets 1 — and the voicemail is still yours to leave. Somebody has to be the strange voice the next caller hears.

Can I call from the same payphone twice?

You can. The phone doesn't judge repeat callers, and frankly neither do we. One point every time you go back, however many times that is. The first call is the find; the rest are visits. It doesn't matter whether you were first or fourth — going back is always 1. The phone survived Y2K. It can handle seeing you twice.

Before somebody finds a loophole: the 20 / 10 / 5 / 1 ladder counts different callers, so you can't climb it against yourself. Your second call to your own phone is a 1-point visit, not second place.

Why leave a voicemail?

You don't have to. But one day somebody else finds the same payphone, and your message is sitting there waiting for them.

A surprising amount of this project turns out to be people standing beside forgotten telephones, talking to strangers they will never meet. Points are points. That part is better.

Where did you get this list of payphones?

Our data comes from payphone-directory.org, a community-maintained directory of payphones across North America. We cross-referenced, geocoded, and deduplicated 3,919 unique Canadian locations — the most complete collection we know of. We spent a while on this. It was worth it.

Here's the catch: that directory hasn't been updated in years. A spot listed with six phones might have two left. It might have none. The directory and reality disagree more often than either would like, which is why we send people outside instead of trusting a spreadsheet.

I called from a payphone, but the system didn't recognize it.

Then you have found something we haven't, which is the best kind of problem. Head to the Submit tab, send us the number printed on the phone, and pick "I called from it, but the number wasn't recognized" as the status. That last part matters: it tells us you were actually standing there with the receiver in your hand.

When we add it to the map, the claim is yours — your username on it, twenty points in your account. You will have found a payphone that nobody knew was still out there.

Found a whole row of them? Submit each one separately. Every phone has its own number, so every phone is its own find. Yes. We checked the math twice.

Every time somebody goes and looks at a payphone, the database gets slightly less wrong.

What happened to payphones in Canada?

Canada's payphone network peaked around 1998 and has been in freefall ever since. The CRTC publishes annual reports about it if you enjoy reading things that make you nostalgic for infrastructure you didn't realize you were losing. We started this because nobody seemed to know what was left. Counting them turned into a game somewhere along the way.

Why payphones?

Because a payphone worked for anyone with (or without) a quarter. 😉 😉 No account, no data plan, no algorithm, no "are you still watching?" No software update since roughly 1987 — if a payphone from 1997 woke up tomorrow it would know exactly how to do its job. A coin, a dial tone, a voice somewhere on the other end. We think that was quietly magic, and we're not ready to let it disappear without at least making a map about it.

What happens when I submit a photo?

Upload a photo to help build a beautiful record of Canada's payphones — only if you like. It'll be public for everyone to see. Standout photos may also be shared on @collectcall.ca — great shots, interesting finds, things that deserve to be seen. This is a personal project, so it depends on how life is treating us. But the whole point is to have fun, go outside, and share a relic that's slowly disappearing. Let's honour the tech that served us all before it's gone.

To save you an email later: photos and captions you submit to the site are public. They're visible to anyone browsing ¢ollect ¢all, associated with the payphone location, and attributed to your username. Privacy matters to us — questions or concerns, email hello@collectcall.ca. No drama.

What do you do with my data? Is my information private?

We take privacy seriously. When you create an account, we store only your chosen username, email address, and province or territory — never sold, never shared. Your Player ID is a random 6-digit number, not tied to your real name anywhere on the public-facing site. That said: voicemails you leave from payphones are public, and photos and captions you submit are public — visible on the site, attributed to your username, associated with the payphone location. That's what the game is. Your email and personal details are never exposed. We also keep the number and time of every call to the toll-free line. We don't run analytics, ads, or trackers of any kind. You can delete your account from the My Account page. See our full Privacy Notice for details.

Does this work on mobile?

Yes. ¢ollect ¢all is fully responsive — the map, modals, leaderboard, and all the rest adapt to your phone's screen. No app to download, no separate mobile site, no QR code to scan. Just open collectcall.ca in your phone's browser and you're in.

Fair warning: finding a payphone is easier with a phone in your hand. We considered this a feature, not a bug.

The map won't load on my iPhone. What gives?

Safari has a habit of blocking cross-site requests, which is how we load map data. It means well. Try Chrome on your phone, or go to Settings → Safari → turn off Prevent Cross-Site Tracking. Either way, we forgive Safari. Mostly.

¢ollect ¢all is a weird little payphone project, not a business. We collect what's needed to run the game and leave the rest alone.

What we collect

Account data: username, email address, and province or territory. Your email is used only for account authentication and is never publicly displayed.
Game activity: which payphones you've claimed, your point totals, your leaderboard ranking, payphones you submit, and reports you file that a payphone is gone. Your username (not email) appears publicly on the leaderboard.
Voicemails: audio recordings you leave from payphones. These are public — other callers can listen to them.
Photos: photos you upload are public — visible on the site under your username and linked to that payphone. The payphone's location is public — it would be a difficult scavenger hunt otherwise. Stand-out photos may also be featured on @collectcall.ca, credited by username and payphone location. Your email address, real name, and other personal details are never included. You can request removal of a specific photo by emailing hello@collectcall.ca.
Payphone calls: we keep the number and timestamp of every call made to our toll-free line. A call is only linked to your account if you enter your Player ID.

Social media

We run an Instagram account at @collectcall.ca. We may feature photos submitted by callers, credited by username and payphone location — both are already public on the site. We will never share your email address, real name, or any other personal identifying information on social media. If you want a photo removed from our Instagram, email hello@collectcall.ca — it'll be down promptly, no questions asked.

Analytics and tracking

We don't. No Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, no marketing tracker, none of the usual furniture. We removed the one analytics tool we had in September 2026, because knowing roughly how many people visited wasn't worth handing a third party a cookie and your approximate location.

That doesn't mean we know nothing. You claim payphones, leave voicemails, upload photos and report phones as gone, and we record all of it. That's the game, and it would be a very short game otherwise. What we don't do is follow you around the rest of the internet, build an advertising profile, or sell anything about you.

Payphones spent decades helping people make calls nobody could trace. It would be a bit embarrassing if the website about payphones turned out to be the nosy one.

Signing in also stores a session token in your browser. That one isn't tracking — it's the thing that keeps you signed in — and clearing your browser data removes it.

What we don't do

We do not sell your data.
We do not share your data with advertisers or third-party marketers.
We do not store your device's location. The Near Me button asks your browser where you are so it can move the map. That coordinate stays on your device. We never receive it, never store it, and never know what it was.
We do not share anything on social media beyond a photo, username, and payphone location — all of which are already public on the site.

Your rights

You can delete your account and associated data directly from the My Account page at any time. You may also request access to, correction of, or deletion of your data by contacting us at hello@collectcall.ca. We will respond within 30 days.

Infrastructure

Data is stored using Supabase (database and authentication) and Vercel (hosting). Phone call handling uses Twilio. All providers are subject to their own privacy policies.

Last updated: September 2026. This notice applies to collectcall.ca and its associated services.

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