Road to history
Roadwork to improve access to Fortress of Louisbourg
Getting to the Fortress of Louisbourg site will be easier and smoother once a $10-million road reconstruction project is completed this fall.
Eddie Kennedy, the site’s acting visitor experience manager, said the project will greatly improve access to the site and will modernize the road system within the Parks Canada property.
“It’s a big project,” he said. “This is our opportunity to upgrade (the road) and bring it up to today’s standards because it was designed at a time when it didn’t see the volume of traffic that we have now coming through it.”
Kennedy said a review of Route 22 within the national historic site was conducted in 2011 and officials found that significant work was required to improve the roads.
As a result, the $10-million road reconstruction project for the Fortress of Louisbourg is part of an $85-million investment by the federal government in Parks Canada infrastructure in Cape Breton.
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First announced last year, other projects include $52.3 million for road construction projects in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park and $10.4 million for the St. Peter’s Canal bridge replacement.
The work to Route 22 at the Fortress of Louisbourg will start near where Parks Canada’s property begins, and continue right to the fortress site. A total of 5.5 kilometres of road will be either totally rebuilt or paved as part of the project.
“It’s going to be a total reconstruct of that Route 22, right over to where you would currently access the site at the fisherman’s hut, so all the paved area is being totally redone,” said Kennedy. “And then auxiliary to that we’re going to be paving in around the back road, which operates primarily as a service road, but in our shoulder season that’s the way visitors access the site in their own individual cars.”
Dexter Construction was the successful bidder and will be carrying out the work beginning next week. The construction will impact visitors to the site, as the buses that take them to the fortress entrance will be stopped for short amounts of time.
“The road will be down to one lane for most of this visitor season and wait time will be a maximum of five minutes,” said Kennedy. “The project should be finished with all the pavement completed by November.”
Kennedy noted that a lot of preparation work went into ensuring the site was properly cleared and prepared for the construction ahead.
“Because it’s a national historic site, we have to make sure that we maintain any cultural resources that might be in there which makes it a bit different than other road construction projects in other areas of the province,” he said, noting preconstruction work included a complete archaeological survey of the area being carried out. “That’s all come back clear so we don’t foresee any difficulty in the expansion or ditching that’s going on with that.”
As an added precaution, however, construction will be monitored closely and an archaeologist will make sure proper procedures are followed.