Pedestrian bridge may be named after Craig
CAMBRIDGE — Naming the city’s new pedestrian bridge over the Grand River in honour of former mayor Doug Craig makes sense to Coun. Frank Monteiro.
“He built that bridge,” Monteiro said. “He was the force behind it.”
So on Tuesday night Monteiro will present a notice of motion at city council. He’ll pitch Craig’s Crossing as his ideal name for the $2-million walking bridge that opened its 102-metre span in May.
Craig, Cambridge’s longestserving mayor with 18 years in office until his defeat this past October, championed the bridge as far back as 2014. As of Monday the bridge has had 191,827 crossings since it opened.
“That bridge had a lot of controversy with it to start with,” Monteiro said. “We got kind of hounded, all of us. But especially him.”
The Bridge to Nowhere critics sneered as the project’s initial price tag doubled. But, Monteiro says, councillors quietly knew that the $120-million Gaslight District deal for an old west-side foundry site would eventually be announced with its twin highrise towers.
In 2016, Gaslight was unveiled. Suddenly, the bridge could be touted as a sensible and attractive pedestrian link between the east-side downtown with the west-side theatre and coming Gaslight residents.
Craig, whose first term as a city councillor began in 1976, felt vindicated.
“The bridge was one of his things,” Monteiro said. “And he was so worried the day that it opened. He was hoping if a hundred people would show up, it would be great. Well, we had over 1,400 people for the opening. So it was a success, is a success.”
Monteiro considered pushing to have the square at city hall named for Craig but he didn’t want to copy Kitchener with its Carl Zehr Square.
Craig, who aims to win the Cambridge nomination for the Tories in next year’s federal election, welcomes the notion of naming the bridge for him.
Rumblings about the possibility began immediately after he lost the mayor’s chair to Kathryn McGarry on election night.
“I was quite pleased when I heard about this,” Craig said on Monday.
“I think it’s a great honour. Certainly, I think it reflects part of the vision I had when I was mayor in terms of getting back to the river and the importance of the river in the community.”
But not every resident favours placing Craig’s name on the bridge.
Fatima Pereira, who ran against Craig in 2003, would much rather see the bridge named after the late Claudette Millar, the city’s first mayor who had to deal with the great flood of 1974. Millar, like Craig, won five elections but her 12 years as mayor were not consecutive.
Pereira believes putting Craig’s name on the bridge would be an insult to “a Canadian tradition” of usually naming bridges, arenas or public buildings after individuals who contributed and have already passed on.
“To me, it is distasteful, quite frankly, to name something of that nature with the name of a person who has not yet passed on — never mind achievements or lack of achievements, thereof,” Pereira said on Monday.
Monteiro expects his notice of motion to be sent to general committee before being considered in the weeks ahead.