Dufferin County’s Premier Bulletin Board System

AMBASSADOR BOARD

A Wildcat! BBS

For six years AMBASSADOR BOARD was Dufferin County’s premier BBS — and the longest running 24 hour board, too! But sadly, in January of 1996, AMBASSADOR BOARD was closed permanently, primarily due to financial and time-contraint considerations.

In it’s hey day it sported five local lines, extended area lines including Flesherton, Dundalk, Feversham, Grand Valley, Orangeville, Caledon, Caledon East, Palgrave, Bolton, Castlemore, Victoria, Brampton, Malton, Woodbridge and the entire 416-metro Toronto dialing area — not bad for a tiny BBS in the little town of Shelburne, Ontario, Canada.

The ‘bass grew to a regular user base of over 1000 and offered over 200 doors (most registered!), over 8000 files on-line (HD) as well as 52 CDs serviced via ROMDOOR database and two CD drives. Puny by today’s standards for even the smallest ISP, but considering this was a time when hard drives cost more than a dollar per megabyte and single speed CD drives were over $400 a pop, it wasn’t too shabby.

Local mail was augmented by echo mail from NANet, WildNET, MSI SupportNET as well as UseNET NewsGroups and Internet e-mail via UUCP using Mustang Software’s powerful wcGATE suite. A satellite feed via Planet Connect guaranteed fresh files and up-to-date news feeds daily.

There were no upload:download ratios, file limits or post:call ratios. Users were free to use their time as they saw fit. For some strange reason the board was never beset by file-base plunderers nor were message conferences bereft of mail. It seems that if you treat callers like human beings they will participate openly and often! The ‘bass set the standard of excellence for others to follow. And many did. Many bulletin boards grew up in the area as would-be SysOps who had cut there BBS teeth at the ‘bass foraged out into new territory and created such virtual worlds as Megabyte, Cat!acombs, Hotel California, AOU, and others. Several of these boards continued to operate successfully for several months after the ‘bass was closed. The last one, Cat!acombs, closed it’s electronic doors for the last time in October of 1999.

AMBASSADOR BOARD was a fun place to visit and according to most callers the best BBS they had found. Calls came from as far away as Madrid, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Dalas, Miami, Melbourne and Igloolik! Many regular users were with us for the entire six years.

Over the years five Co-SysOps shared with Steve in the running of the ‘bass. A special thanks to Ed Howard, Bill Pooley, Don Cortell, Rob Brown and Paul Curtis. Callers and SysOps both will miss the ‘bass!

Maybe someday there will be an AMBASSADOR II…