BRIDGES
Point Ellice,
People in near Victoria, B.C., were celebrating Queen Victoria’s birthday on May 26, 1896, when a crowd of people overloaded a streetcar, which pulled the bridge down as it fell off. Fifty-five people died. The Quebec Bridge across the St. Lawrence River near Quebec City took 30 years to finish. It collapsed twice during construction. By late August, 1907, it was clear that not all parts of the rail and highway bridge lined up safely. The message to stop working on the bridge never reached construction crews and at least 75 of the 86 men working on the bridge died on Aug. 29 when it twisted and fell apart. About one-third of them were Mohawk steelworkers from the First Nations community of Caughnawaga. Work started again in 1913 on what was supposed to be a better design, and in three years, the bridge was nearly done. Just after the giant centre section had been lifted into place on Sept. 11, 1916, it broke away, taking 13 workers with it into the river. While the Second Narrows Bridge was being built in Vancouver, it collapsed into Burrard Inlet on June 17, 1958, killing 19 men. The cause was a combination of poor-quality steel, design problems and engineering mistakes. In 1994, the bridge was renamed in honour of the men who died: the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing.