Symbolic phones offer Manitobans a connection to the deceased

A rotary phone next to a sidewalk in Winnipeg is among hundreds of symbolic phones around the world, allowing people who are grieving to find solace.

A rotary phone next to a sidewalk on Winnipeg’s Cathedral Avenue is among hundreds of symbolic phones around the world, allowing people who are grieving to find solace in the face of a loss.

Known as a wind phone, the unconnected telephone allows people to ‘call’ and have one-way conversations with deceased loved ones, with the belief that their messages are carried to them by the wind.

“It’s a safe and private space for people to pour out their love, their sorrow, their memories, to catch their loved ones up,” said Amy Dawson, founder of My Wind Phone, a website that maps wind phones all over the world.

“It’s a dedicated space for grief, really, pretty much in a world where we don’t honour grief well,” she said, speaking with CTV News from Pennsylvania.

After the loss of her youngest child in 2020 following a prolonged illness, Dawson was trying to cope with her passing.

“It’s every parent’s worst nightmare,” she said.

Previously, Dawson and her daughter had heard about the symbolic phone, though the concept only sparked back into her mind after her daughter’s passing.

“And if anyone’s on her phone, it’s my daughter. So if there’s a phone in heaven, my daughter is on it, and I began researching and organizing everything, and it made me feel more connected to her,” she said. “It was just my way of continuing my relationship with her.”

Dawson said she began her website about four years ago, sharing information on her research into the symbolic phones with site visitors and providing resources for creators and stewards of wind phones.

As of last Wednesday, she has mapped 453 wind phones around the world, noting the number can change daily. She said the majority—more than 300 wind phones—are located in the U.S.

“Using the wind as a messenger isn’t anything new,” she said, adding that Greek mythology used wind to link our world to the afterlife. “The wind is symbolic … you can trust the wind will take your words where they need to go.”

The wind phone’s origins

According to Dawson, the original wind phone dates to 2010 in Ōtsuchi, Japan, and was created by Itaru Sasaki. She said after Sasaki’s cousin passed away, he erected a phone booth in his garden to help him deal with his grief through one-way conversations.

Following the 2011 tsunami, she said Sasaki opened his wind phone overlooking the Pacific Ocean to the public to help families deal with the tragedy.

“People made a pilgrimage to come to the wind phone to honour their loved ones that weren’t found, to have a conversation to say goodbye,” said Dawson.

According to Dawson’s research, the first documented wind phone in the U.S. was erected in California in February 2017 to honour 36 people killed in a building fire.

Wind phones mapped in Manitoba

Wind phones, which are usually placed in nature, are now documented in all Canadian provinces, with at least two in Manitoba, according to Dawson.

She said a wind phone in Winnipeg, located on the east side of Cathedral Ave. between Main St. and Scotia St., went up on the map earlier this month and is available during the summer months. A rotary dial phone rests on a table bearing the inscription “The Connection Desk,” along with consoling messages.

Another rotary wind phone went up this summer in Boissevain’s Arts Park, affixed within a miniature phone booth.

“It’s just an opportunity for people to express their feelings to someone who has passed on,” said Leona Peters, a Boissevain resident who played a role in getting the wind phone set up.

“If you feel like you need to talk to your loved one, you dial their name and you just talk, and the wind takes your message and it’s gone.”

Dawson noted that wind phones come in all sorts of varieties, such as phones in boxes, booths, on trees, or on tables, but said this form of coping might not be for everyone.

“Just because you go to a wind phone and find one doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to do for you what it might do for your friend or someone else, or what it’s done for me,” she said.

Dawson said wind phones are also becoming a tool for children, which are now starting to appear on school grounds and in play areas in certain locations.

“So teaching children about grief and grieving and recognizing it … we’ll give them tools to handle grief and to at least be able to name it, and perhaps that will then trickle down to mental health and reducing suicide. It’s giving children one more way of coping,” she said.

“It’s not connected to any wires, but we say it’s connected to love.”