N.I.D. Location (Bell Canada cannot find it)

I'm from the US so take this at face value. The NID in Canada is the same as demarcation point in the US phone jargon. If your phone lines were installed properly, and 40 years ago is still considered modern times, there should be an all-weather box external to the house for the NID. Could be in a basement I suppose, but it should be easily accessible.

Intermatic makes telephone NID's. They also make whole house surge suppressors. I assume a phone teck would recognize a NID, so I would guess that it is something other than that.

Tracking it down? Pretty easy I would think. You want a cable tracker that works through walls. You put a RF signal on the phone wires and use a radio receiver to scan the walls and follow the wiring. Something like this:
http://www.testequipmentandmore.com/BK_Precision_262.html

Google is your friend. "Cable tracker" and "in wall" will lead you to other options.

-Jim

 

As Jim said you want a cable tracker, and may I suggest you hire a competent person that already owns one... They will have the experience to make it pain free...

On a side note this might need to be coordinated with the Telco because without access to that box you are still connected to the Telco and thus all sorts of things could go wrong... You will likely have to get the Telco to disconnect at the local neighborhood gang box while you locate lines...

Chances are REAL good it's located right inside the house where the burial cable enters. if it's not externally mounted like it should be...

That grey box you linked is standard fanfare in the US, but they are also used by cable companies, you need to crack it open and see what the wiring is inside... Phone ones will have a traditional modular jack, cable ones will have coaxial connectors and possibly notch filters, they are can like things the wires plug into...

 

It's straight forward to open them, there is generally just a screw holding them closed... There 'might' be a little wire tag attached by whatever company but a quick snip with some wire cutters will remove that... BTW at least in the US those tags although 'official' looking are not something that is going to get you 'busted' if you remove them for legit service reasons... If you reconnect your 'unplugged' service that is another story, it used to be the joke back in the analog cable days in my area, the techs were too lazy to climb the pole and would just disconnect at the box and apply a 'terminator' to the coax that was supposed to prevent you from hooking it back up... Well a pair of pliers and you could crush the terminator and remove it with ease and just screw the coax connector back together and get free cable until they audited your house, audits were rare so you could get years worth of free service...

 

Only Cable and Telco (maybe alarm companies or something like that) will use the ones you linked... All the other meters don't use that type of junction box...

Crack it open newer ones will have a small short 4" long phone wire on the bottom plugged in with a normal modular jack that is the phone one... There should also be a little cover inside you can remove and see the individual service wires but that isn't necessary unless you are doing a hookup... You can test it by unplugging the short wire (this disconnects the house) and plugging in a phone into that jack outside and see if it works...

If it's an older one it will just have a terminal block with the 4 or 6 small colored wires... Normally black, red, green, yellow for the first two phone lines that is a default install...

 

The first two photo appear to be a power junction, pull or even a sub fuse/circuit box... This is mains electricity, not phone... It might very well be a timer box, possibly for a sprinkler system?

Third photo just appears to be bunch of misc wires, mains power, TV and possibly phone wire or two, basically just a mess...

Forth photo looks to be the top of a main electricity fuse or circuit box with some TV wires dangling around it...