100 YEARS LATER
From skepticism to being featured in music videos, landmark hits 100 years
One of Toronto’s oldest and most recognizable landmarks celebrates a milestone today. Though the bridge’s official title is Prince Edward Viaduct, it hasn’t really stuck around in everyday usage, as Torontonians stubbornly call the bridge by the name of the street instead, the Bloor Street Viaduct. The bridge rose in proposed cost from $759,000 in 1910 to a final cost of about $2,480,349.05. More on
of Toronto’s oldest and most recognizable landmarks is turning 100 today.
To celebrate the centennial of the Bloor St. Viaduct, here are some things don’t know about one of the city’s most impressive feats of engineering. “The bridge to nowhere”: Although it is now impossible to imagine the city without the viaduct, residents of the Don Valley were skeptical when it was proposed, labelling it the “bridge to nowhere” due to the low population along the Danforth. A pretty penny: The bridge rose in proposed cost from $759,000 in1910 to a final cost of about $2,480,349.05, or about $36.3 million in today’s dollars. Prince Edward Viaduct: The bridge’s official title, named after the future King Edward VIII, hasn’t really stuck around in everyday usage, as Torontonians stubbornly call the bridge by the name of the street instead.
In the Skin of a Lion: The viaduct features prominently in Michael Ondaatje’s book about an immigrant labourer. He dedicates Chapter 2 to describing the building of the bridge. This part of the book was based on months of research in the Toronto city archives. Media appearances: The viaduct has been featured in the films Saint Monica, Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Room; the TV show Degrassi Junior High; the play In Gabriel’s Kitchen; the novel Flashforward, and the songs “War on Drugs” by the Barenaked Ladies, “Anything could happen” by Bruce Cockburn and “National Hum” by The Constantines.
Deadly legacy: By 1997, an average of one person every 22 days killed him- or herself by jumping from the viaduct.
Barrier: City council approved the construction of a barrier to prevent suicides in 1998, but it wasn’t completed until 2003 due to concerns about funding. During that time, it’s estimated that between 48 to 60 people took their lives on the bridge.
Luminous Veil: Architect Dereck Revington won the bid to construct the barrier, which he envisioned in equal parts as designed to prevent people from taking their own lives, and as a public art project.
It was called the Luminous Veil and was made up of more than 9,000 steel rods with LED lights lighting up both sides. The rods were installed in 2003, but the lighting wasn’t added until July 2015. A 2017 study from Sunnybrook Hospital recorded only one suicide on the bridge since the Veil was added.
Four referenda: The viaduct was not an easy project to get built. There were four public referenda on the bridge’s construction, the last of which resulted in public approval once the current meandering route was adopted in 1913.
Foresight: The city’s works commissioner, R.C. Harris, demanded that the lower level of the bridge contain tracks for future mass transit, a move that brought him into intense conflict with city council.