Bridges out west

I'm fast approaching the limit of the portable drive I've been storing my project on. I have 40 GB left out of 500. I was saying to P-Doug the other day that not all that long ago, back in 1998, I was paying $300 or thereabout for my first 1 gigabyte hard drive, more than double the size of the my first. That seemed like an impressive amount of storage then. Now forty times that much is getting tight. It's about the videos, mostly. When I consider that it's not all that unusual anymore for me to come home with videos that each would fill up that 1998 hard drive four times over, it's not really that surprising.

I'm of the opinion that this would be a good time to get the ducks in a row and consider a first accrual to the provincial archives, for a number of reasons. 500 GB is a lot of information to drop on anyone, no matter how well-organized. Secondly, I'm constantly haunted by the idea that, despite the fact that I back up the drive, they're both in the same physical location and some kind of accident could destroy a decade of work (well, four years of work, but material stretching back to the mid-90s that I can't replace), and moving it on to someone else would be that load off my mind. P-Doug thinks I should bump up to a larger drive for now.

One thing I'd like to do is get a drive small enough that I can store it in my safe deposit box at the bank; the idea being that once a month or so I could run up there and fetch it, back up the projects to it, and return it to the bank. There are 1TB and larger 2.5" drives now, powered by USB, which would be ideal... assuming they fit the box. I think they do. I don't know. I need to research that.

Anyway... here's the story of this latest excursion.

Wellington County and Waterloo Region are still more rural in their entirety than Toronto is, at least since about 1970. Consequently there are still a lot more interesting bridges out there. I spotted a handful to take in last week, to which P-Doug added the suggestion of a bridge on the Grand River in West Montrose (question: what became of East Montrose?), the only existing covered wooden bridge in all of Ontario.

It had been my intention to go on Saturday, and for me to do the driving (aside from P-Doug getting to and from my place from his). Saturday morning came around with forecasts of snow and slippery conditions, so P-Doug called and convinced me to hold off a day for better conditions. When Sunday rolled around, he offered to do the driving, in part because he's more familiar with the area. I was a little reluctant because I didn't want to use his gas on my project (and having just spent $40 on the gas to do it, I wasn't eager to pay for more gas so soon!) and because it meant I wouldn't be able to mount a camera in the windshield as well as power it off the car. But I figured hey, I have arms, I have spare batteries. And it saved me the trouble of having him turn the thing on and off and on and off. So this was the new plan. I offered instead to pay for lunch at a place we had in mind and figure we probably came out square, or thereabouts.

We headed out on the 401 westbound fairly early; probably before 10, and were in the vicinity of Guelph, our first stop, by about 11. Our first project was...

Stone Road bow arch bridge

View Larger Map

According to the cross bar on the bridge itself, it was built in 1916 to span the Eramosa River. Stone Road is in the south of Guelph, still essentially outside of town or just at the fringe. Twenty years from now it'll be a whole different story. It's hard for me to judge if the bow arch bridge was wide enough to let two cars pass at the same time... probably, but only just, and I'll bet the odd mirror was lost in so doing. In 2005, an adjacent modern bridge took over the route, and the bow arch was removed from the road network, but kept for pedestrians and the Scout camp on the south side.

The Scout camp driveway is as far as you can now drive on the old stretch of Stone Road. Beyond it are three barriers to vehicles on the bridge; one at the driveway, and one each on either approach to the bridge. Earlier shots I've seen of the bridge on Flickr (all, oddly, since it was closed) don't show these barriers, and I think it's a real pity the city felt it necessary to ruin the aesthetics with them since then.

We approached from the west; P-Doug wielding the S100 and me the W3 [A note about which... yes, W3, not W1. A camera store in Buffalo was unloading their demo model of Fuji's newer 3D camera on eBay at a cheap snip, less than half the price of retail, and I just had to bite. 3D HD video from the early 2010s is going to be a godsend for researchers someday; it's also stunningly better with low light conditions than the previous model.] We did some good work on the bridge during the half an hour or so we were there. I would really like to go back there in the spring when it's warm enough to get into the river and under the bridge and shoot it from other angles that February simply doesn't afford.

This bridge is likely to be around for a long time. I think the value in these shots will be its current condition, the nature of its surroundings in 2012, and even the character of the graffiti to be found on it and the barriers.

P-Doug got what I considered the best shot of the whole trip just before we left.

On our way out, I hiked up to the new road to photograph the level crossing there. They made allowance to expand the 2005 bridge, so expect before long Stone Road will be four-laned, and I can't imagine them doing that and not eliminating the hazard of four lanes of high-speed traffic crossing rail tracks. I'm convinced there will be an over- or underpass there within a decade. My shots will show what was.

After that, not far away, there was...

Niska Road Bailey bridge

View Larger Map

Now I'm used to thinking of Bailey bridges as a phenomenon of World War II and just after. But from what I understand, this bridge was built only about 25 years ago, or so. It's a one-lane bridge that carries Niska Road across the Speed River on the southwest corner of Guelph. The whole idea was to discourage traffic using the road to get back and forth to Hwy 6, while enabling access for locals. Judging from what we saw, that's really backfired. There were long stretches of so much oncoming traffic that for much of the time it wasn't worth the risk of trying to cross the bridge on foot. We were there 15 or 20 minutes, and I wouldn't be surprised if close to 100 cars crossed it in that time, and some of them just flying, too. There were at least a few occasions when cars had to stop to yield to traffic already on the bridge. I've seen proposals to replace this bridge with a two-laner, which strikes me as a good compromise between encouraging too much traffic (Niska Road is residential for a while east of the bridge) and continuing to risk the almost inevitable mid-bridge smash-up. Suggestions are that there will be money earmarked for this in Wellington County's 2014 budget, so this bridge may not be around as such for much longer.

In a way, it's regretable; there aren't that many Bailey bridges still in use in Ontario. But it's clear the status quo isn't viable... especially not with Guelph growing like it is.

We headed north across country and into Waterloo Region, where we stopped at what was the gem of the expedition...

"Kissing Bridge"—covered bridge

View Larger Map

This bridge dates to 1880, spanning the Grand River in the little hamlet of West Montrose. Another bridge about half a mile to the east carries the serious traffic nowadays but this treasure is not only still in existence, it's still in use by vehicular traffic. It draws dozens of tourists daily and is in extremely good upkeep.

To be honest, this stop wasn't really so much for the project as it was just to see the thing. I honestly don't think this area is going to look remarkably different within my lifetime. It's a long way from any city, it's already clearly a heritage-heavy site, and the bridge is the heart of the community in more ways than one. It's all going to look like this for a very long time, so at best, the shots of this bridge in the projects will be more about the chronological details the bridge finds itself in in 2012 than about the bridge itself.

Something about the covered bridge just lends itself to a winter setting. The colour, standing out against the grey pallor and the dead river passing below; the snow scattered around... it simply wouldn't be as evocative, I think, in warmer weather. My one regret in our not going on Saturday is that the shots might have been that much more romantic in heavier snow (even then, we did see a few flakes in the air while we were there).

Wonder what they would have thought of this back in 1880:

For myself, I got some interesting 3D shots of P-Doug using a couple's camera to snap some touristy shots of them. I was inside the bridge and the w3 had just enough zoom and just enough balance sensitivity to capture those interesting views.

JB's Mongolian

View Larger Map

Not a bridge, but the place we went to eat after a quick stop at Picard's Peanuts in St. Jacobs. JB's Mongolian is the first Mongolian BBQ place I ever found in Ontario, out in Kitchener-Waterloo long before I ever found one in Toronto (of which even now there are still only two that I'm aware of). I'd had Mongolian in both Los Angeles and Chicago, but JB's was my first in Canada. I hadn't been there in probably six or seven years. It was nice to go back.

The big adventure here was the money situation. Since P-Doug was driving and gassing up, I said I'd pay for lunch. Well, I almost never carry cash. I tend to pay by debit. Their internet was down and despite several attempts, we weren't getting a line. So we decided to wait a few minutes. Finally it worked... but with the tip, the amount exceeded what I had in the account, so it was their turn to wait while I used an app on my phone to move money around in my accounts. Finally, on the fifth attempt, the bill got paid. Sheesh. :)

After that it was a drive out to New Hamburg to see...

Perth Street one-lane wooden railway overpass

View Larger Map

This one's definitely not going to last forever. It's one of the last remaining, if not the last remaining, wooden road bridges over railroad tracks in Ontario. I missed photographing one in Durham Region recently by about a year. But we got this one, at least in video. We didn't get out and shoot this one. P-Doug figures the real value will be when it's shot from the tracks, and right now it's just too cool and difficult to do that, so maybe in the spring or summer.

By that time, it was past four, so we headed home, making our way back to the 401 and the hour-long trip back to Toronto. It was a full day and I'm really pleased we did everything we set out to do and got some good work out of it all.

Lawrence Avenue pony truss bridge

Jim over at Down the Road, in a very kind and gentle (and probably inadvertent) way, made me kind of get off my butt yesterday and put my bridge where my mouth is. :)

I found out about this bridge about ten years ago when someone casually mentioned it on their photoblog and posted a picture of the abutment you see below in a recent posting. I did research and found aerial photos of it, crossing the Don as part of a rather scrotum-like course that once carried Lawrence Avenue East into the Don Valley and across the East Don. It's only been in the last couple of years that I've actually come across photos of that bridge from a human perspective. I put a few things together for Jim's benefit, but it occurs to me now that, now that I have them gathered at last, I ought to do what I've been meaning to for a while and post them. Someone out there might really love to see this.

Here's what the area looked like in 1947.

For context, here are increasingly wide views of the area today... the last corresponding with the 1947 view above, more or less.

Here's a shot of the bridge, looking southward, I think, dating from probably the 1940s.

Here are a couple of shots taken by James Salmon in the 1950s. The bridge was closed at the time, apparently. I suspect this had something to do with Hurricane Hazel. I suspect the bridge was open to traffic again prior to its removal circa 1963, when the current six-lane course of Lawrence was opened about a hundred yards to the north, and the Don Valley Parkway was constructed out of the south up the road allowance of Woodbine Avenue. There never was a corner of Lawrence and Woodbine, but technically there kind of was, if you see what I mean. These views look west.

A summer of bridges

Well, this summer I’ve done more than my usual share of lost bridge exploration. This is the kind of thing I love, but I didn’t really know why. I’ve long been an aficionado of closed roads for the romance of what were once well-travelled public places, surrendered back to the nature out of which they were once cut; there’s something humbling about that. But bridges are different. They tend to persist much longer than mere lines of asphalt between fields and trees. They’re a much more tenable symbol of human intent and ability. A chunk of asphalt in a clearing can be evocative of a former human presence. But coming across a span of stone, or better yet of iron, across a river, is a thrilling and even eerie sensation. There’s a power to a bridge that transcends simple engineering and utility. A bridge is not just an artifact, it’s a presence. To observe one alone in nature is almost to feel as though you are being observed in return; something like with the Monolith in the movies 2001 and 2010.

And so this summer was so often about seeking them out; the lost, or soon to be lost, examples of what we’ve wrought. Unfortunately, for all my ground work, I’ve done little enough about recording my impressions and putting them up here for my own memory, and for the interests of others. Aside from the Gorewood Road bridge, I’ve completely neglected this chore. So now, in one fell swoop, I’d like to correct that.

Beechwood Drive

I don’t know much about his bridge except that it predates the 1950s, because I discovered it in a photograph taken by James Salmon in the 50s. At that time it was still a going concern and you can see a building at the far end of the bridge in the shot. From what I’ve seen in contemporary aerial photos, this bridge didn’t really go anywhere except to what appears to have been a quarry on the far side of the river. In the field on the near side was an elaborate set of outbuildings that were probably for processing whatever it was that came from the quarry. That’s just a guess, of course. I had assumed the road must have connected to Pottery Road at one time, the only major road to come down into the valley on the west side back then, but there’s no evidence I’ve found that it ever did.

The road still leads to the bridge and amazingly, you can still drive down into the valley on it, although not much further than that. The rest of the way to the bridge has to be undertaken on foot; a very pleasant walk of about a half a mile. The area is still well-used by strollers and bicyclists, and crisscrossed by rail lines, some still in daily use, others forgotten to the point of having been removed.

The bridge itself is fairly modern design; built entirely of steel and formerly road-surfaced in cement (I think). I’ve been under the bridge, which was a little tricky but manageable, and it’s holding up extremely well, for all the years and floods it’s seen. The aerial photo I have shows a bridge in this spot in 1953; if it is indeed the same bridge, then it’s one of the few hardy enough to have survived Hurricane Hazel in 1954 intact and undamaged enough to stay in business to the present day.

These shots date from on and around Canada Day, 2010.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sneath Road

Sneath Road is a little suburban street in Bolton that crosses the Humber River. The bridge is one of the vanishing breed of one-lane pony truss bridges that once proliferated in the rural fringe around Ontario’s cities, but began vanishing in favour of more ambitious replacements in the late 1950s and wholesale by the 1960s. There aren’t many left in existence and far fewer still in operation. Sneath Road bridge was an exception to both rules until very recently; it was closed to vehicular and pedestrian traffic at the beginning of October, 2007. Our visit there made it self-evident that pedestrians have, willy-nilly, reassumed the use of the bridge, but it remains closed to cars. Even more recently, local residents have fought off a proposal to remove the bridge and/or replace it. So it looks like this rare pony truss will persist for some time to come, and motorists will simply have to find another way. :)

 

 

Rebecca Street

This find was accidental. I was enjoying a park on Bronte Creek with a friend several weeks ago and we noticed the bridge. I waded out into the creek and down to the bridge. We noticed old abutments there and I assumed these were from a former bridge there that had recently been replaced. But when I went looking for the story of it all, I discovered that this had long been a gap in the road system and that the Rebecca Street bridge was only built just after the start of the current century. There’s no mention I can find of a previous span, even one torn out by Hurricane Hazel. So this is a mystery I haven’t solved yet... what, then, are these paired abutments on either side of the river?

Sept. 20, 2010 – I've actually stumbled across the answer in the meantime. It turns out that the abutments were part of a bridge built for the Hamilton Radial Electric Railway. It was built in 1905, went into service in 1906, and was taken out of service in 1925. The site I found the information on showed the route, and it did indeed follow what is now Rebecca Street. I don't know when the bridge was torn down, but while it stood, it looked like this (photo from the Milton Historical Society):

16th Avenue

This one-lane, wooden-plank bridge carries 16th Avenue traffic back and forth over the Little Rouge between Reesor Road and York-Durham Line, and I know for a fact it’s for the chop. At some time in the next 10-15 years, if not sooner, this bridge will be removed, and the course of 16th Avenue changed to eliminate the dogleg at Reesor Road. The road will be widened at the same time, and in all likelihood, suburbia, which already exists walking distance to the west, will overflow the fields shortly thereafter. For the moment, it’s a strange, noisy little bridge in the field that cars already cross with surprising frequency. It took some doing to get down there to get the under shots, including being bitten on the neck by a big spider whose web I busted up crossing the field.

Sept. 20, 2010 — Also, I'm wrong: I found a document that points out that while they will be rerouting 16th Avenue, possibly saving this bridge on request of Rouge Park's administration, they won't be widening 16th Avenue. It's going to remain two lanes east of Donald Cousens Parkway.

King-Vaughan Road

This little one-laner over the East Humber might be around for a while yet. It’s still pretty isolated from suburbia, and it’s in a river valley that might wind up slated for conservation purposes, which would limit the access to it. It’s also on a weird diversion from King-Vaughan Road’s natural right-of-way that, if the road is ever improved, might see this bridge survive by being totally bypassed. It’s hard to say. Oddly enough, all the wear on this bridge seems to be on the side away from the flow of the river, which is contra-intuitive to me.

Kirkham’s Road

At one time, Kirkham’s Road was the name for what’s now Meadowvale Road, skirting the east side of the Toronto Zoo since circa 1975. Now only a little bit of the road still has its original name. In the area where it crosses the Rouge River, it’s had a wild history of course changes since the 1950s. In order aerial shots, it’s clear that an even older bridge was once there, a bit to the west of where the current one, built in the mid-to-late 50s, exists today. The bridge, along with its southern connection to Meadowvale Road, was closed as structurally unsound in 2005. Its fate is still undecided but it looks to me like, before too long, it will be torn down, and the water main it carries will be put under the Rouge. So, I thought I’d get down there and photograph the bridge and the closed part of the road while it was still possible. It’s surprising how quickly and aggressively nature has begun to reclaim that stretch after just five years of disuse.