https://ottawacitizen.com/feature/re...t-of-symbolism
Author of the article:Randy Boswell
Published Jan 06, 2024
The national capital’s most picturesque crossing of the Ottawa River isn’t scheduled to be dismantled, replaced and reopened until 2032. But members of the federal government team overseeing the planned demolition of the Alexandra Bridge and the erection of the structure that will take its place are likely going to need the full eight years just to meet their own ambitious goals for what the reborn landmark is expected to accomplish symbolically.
According to the comprehensive overview document guiding the expected $800-million project, the new bridge in the heart of Ottawa-Gatineau will have to bear not only the weight of thousands of trucks, cars and buses as they journey daily across the river, but also the heavy responsibility of commemorative and metaphorical obligations explicitly written into the 477-page blueprint prepared by Public Services and Procurement Canada and the National Capital Commission.
The new bridge, according to the PSPC-NCC integrated project team leading the monumental undertaking, will need to:
1. celebrate the engineering marvel that the original, 122-year-old structure represents;
2. advance the cause of Indigenous reconciliation;
3. include features to commemorate a dark moment in the LGBTQ2+ history of Canada;
4. pay homage to the designated heritage river running below, as well as:
5. the wildlife all around;
6. the shoreline archaeological heritage;
7. the original construction material (i.e. century-old piers and girders);
8. the breathtaking vista;
9. the relationship between Ontario and Quebec;
10. the principle of sustainability;
11. the multiple merits of “active transportation”;
12. and — why not? — the story of Canada itself.
As one of several summarizing statements puts it, the project managers have set themselves the task of “creating an emblematic bridge in the form of an exceptional civic site that reflects Canada’s national identity and values, while respecting the integrity of the cultural landscape of the capital.”
The new bridge, according to the PSPC-NCC integrated project team leading the monumental undertaking, will need to, among other things, maintain the breathtaking vista.
More specifically, the overview states that “the new design of the bridge will reflect the different histories that overlay the land, specifically that of Indigenous partners and minority groups, including members of the LGBTQ2+ communities.”
And then there’s this: “The new design that will replace the existing steel structure, must build on its legacy and important historical context through a state of-the-art, world-class architectural and structural bridge design that is both a statement of the present time and reflective of the past.”
The report even posits the possibility of “reuse of materials” from the original structure as a commemorative feature of the new bridge.
For now, it’s all just words in an overview report. An even more robust expression of these lofty goals awaits the completion of a dedicated heritage impact assessment currently being prepared for the project.
But there is a strong sense communicated in the framework document for the bridge that all such construction-of-meaning goals will be nearly as important as constructing the physical thing that gets vehicles, people, bicycles, wheelchairs, e-scooters and baby strollers from one side of the Kichi Zibi to the other.
At the moment, the historic span is closed to vehicular traffic but available to pedestrians, cyclists and other low-impact users. It might seem paradoxical, but the current closure is enabling repair and rehabilitation work that will keep the bridge in good working order just long enough to permit its safe and efficient deconstruction beginning in 2028.
As a recent press release stated, crews are now working to “stabilize the bridge structure so it can be taken apart safely as part of the replacement project.”
In short, they’re fixing it up to tear it down. Then, by 2032 if all stays to schedule, an “iconic” new crossing will be in place and ready to use.
But it won’t just be a new bridge between Ottawa and Gatineau. According to the plan, it’ll have to be a bridge brimming with connections to the past and the future.
“Building on and continuing the legacy of our national icons, the bridge will work both as foreground and a background, a sculpture and a setting to the experience of the nation’s capital,” the project description states, adding that key principles about preserving views, commemorating built heritage and history, and symbolizing important principles and ideas will “provide further guidance to the concepts that will be used in the development of the new bridge.”
To be clear, the project description also includes many references to the kinds of engineering challenges normally associated with maintaining, knocking down and building bridges — corrosion, cracks and cantilevers; trestles and trusses; plus (reassuringly for us non-experts) adherence to safe standards for “seismic performance” and “load carrying capacity.”
An interprovincial crossing that’s elegant and meaningful is important; but one that doesn’t suffer the same fate as the old, falling-down London Bridge of nursery rhyme infamy is also desirable, my fair lady.
The orderly “deconstruction and reconstruction” of the river-spanning conduit is rightly identified as the prime objective of the project, along with creating a massive piece of urban infrastructure that “serves as an integral transportation link, essential to the mobility planning in both Ottawa and Gatineau.”
But a signature bridge for a G7 capital can be more than that — much more. As the project’s official mission statement puts it, the dual aim is “to create a sustainable interprovincial transportation connection that will prioritize active mobility and highlight the symbolic importance of the site to all Canadians for many generations to come.”
David Jeanes, one of Ottawa’s most prominent heritage advocates, is also a sustainable-transportation proponent and a civil engineer by trade. It’d be a challenge to find anyone in the capital who could better articulate an appreciation of the twin challenges facing the bridge builders: to erect a sturdy structure to carry us across the water for the next few hundred years while investing it with the necessary artistry, imagination and sense of history.
Jeanes is a former president of Heritage Ottawa, which promotes the conservation and showcasing of heritage architecture in the city. He’s also on the PSPC-NCC’s public advisory group for the bridge project as a representative of Transport Action Canada, which advocates for sustainable and efficient public transit and improved infrastructure for individuals’ active transportation — cycling, walking and other healthy, carbon-free means of locomotion.
Both organizations are also part of the Alexandra Bridge Coalition, which has led the fight against the demolition of the original crossing.
If Jeanes and the rest of Ottawa’s heritage and environmental communities had their druthers, the existing bridge would be preserved and repurposed — not replaced. The ABC coalition has spent years unsuccessfully trying to convince PSPC and the NCC to keep the current bridge intact, but halt vehicular traffic and convert it to a crossing exclusively for active transportation and public transit — specifically an interprovincial tramway or light-rail line that would represent a fraction of the weight and structural stresses posed by endless streams of cars and trucks and buses.
“The concern on the heritage side,” Jeanes notes, is that much energy is being poured into figuring out how to commemorate the current bridge, “rather than considering the question of, you know, is the bridge worthy of preservation?”
And while Jeanes acknowledges that this battle appears to be lost, he argues that federal officials pushing ahead with the new bridge project have never seriously studied the light-use option favoured by opponents of Alexandra’s replacement. The Alexandra Bridge Coalition insists that because the existing bridge is so little used by cars and trucks (9 per cent of all cross-river vehicular traffic in the capital) and so extensively used by cyclists and pedestrians (about one-third of all cross-river traffic in the capital), the PSPC and NCC have ignored a better solution than replacement.
“That decision was made by them last fall,” Jeanes concedes. “We’re aware, from that point of view, that people would say the train has left the station. But the Alexandra Bridge Coalition and Heritage Ottawa still don’t feel that the alternative . . . has been adequately considered.
“PSPC is convinced that the bridge has to be rebuilt to Canadian highway bridge standards,” adds Jeanes. “And we feel that that’s the wrong criteria.”
If David Jeanes, former president of Heritage Ottawa, and the rest of Ottawa’s heritage and environmental communities had their druthers, the existing bridge would be preserved and repurposed — not replaced. PHOTO BY ERROL MCGIHON, /Postmedia
In 2021, PSPC’s chief engineer Pierre Lebrun accepted an invitation from Heritage Ottawa to give a public presentation outlining the federal department’s case for replacing — not refurbishing — the bridge.
“It wasn’t an easy decision for PSPC to move forward with the replacement of the bridge,” Lebrun told the audience at the time. “People within PSPC are as attached to the bridge as people outside of PSPC. However, we knew the bridge was at the end of its service life, the feasibility of maintaining it was questionable, and we needed to address the many risks associated with its condition.”
There will be other battles ahead, says Jeanes, and that includes holding the PSPC-NCC project team to its pledges to elegantly commemorate the original bridge and communicate a range of other ideas and values.
Fine words in the project overview will require reinforcement and elaboration in the forthcoming heritage impact assessment, Jeanes adds. “Would it be just some plasticized interpretive panels along the bridge or at the entrance to the bridge that would give that historical information? Those are great for a while, but they don’t necessarily last forever.”
One option being considered is to essentially replicate the design of the original structure as a tribute to its beauty and engineering achievements, albeit with modern materials and techniques to enhance the safety, maintenance and longevity of the replacement.
Even if the new bridge doesn’t approximately replicate the existing bridge, said Jeanes, there will be public pressure on the federal government to create something very special in that location rather than a strictly functional crossing that fails to live up to its billing as a new architectural icon for the capital.
“People are saying, if you build a utilitarian bridge there, you’re losing what we have today, which is a significant landmark in an important setting,” he said. The integrated project team’s highlighting of ambitious symbolic and commemorative goals is “absolutely” applauded by Heritage Ottawa, and Jeanes noted that “the reason those messages came out so strongly is that those were the messages from the public consultations, and from the work of the Alexandra Bridge Coalition.”
In 2020, an online survey about the impending bridge project conducted by the NCC and PSPC gathered nearly 3,000 responses from members of the public. When asked to identify the issue that most concerned them about the work ahead, the No. 1 answer (listed by 64 per cent of all respondents) was “loss of the unique character and heritage features of the Alexandra Bridge.”
In mid-November, PSPC and NCC officials provided a project update to Jeanes and other members of the public advisory group. They emphasized that the ongoing heritage impact assessment would “identify and articulate the heritage values and character-defining attributes” of the bridge replacement project, ensuring the integration of the new structure within “the broader cultural landscape.”
They also committed to “involve Algonquin design experts” and “seek traditional knowledge perspectives” in carrying out the project, and highlighted plans to prioritize “preservation of views and celebration of the bridge’s legacy.”
A Citizen feature story from 2014 appears to have helped inspire one of the probable commemorations — far from a celebratory one, but vital to preserving knowledge of a tragic and important episode in LGBTQ2+ history in Canada. The in-depth article by reporters Andrew Duffy and Marie-Danielle Smith, cited in the PSPC-NCC report and headlined “Death by Hate: The life, power and symbolism of Alain Brosseau,” vividly recalled the 1989 “gay-bashing” murder of a young man who was thrown to his death off the Alexandra Bridge by a homophobic killer.
In August 2009 at the Alexandra Bridge, then-Ottawa police chief Vern White and then-Gatineau police chief Mario Harel marched alongside hundreds of supporters to honour the life of Alain Brosseau.
In August 2009 at the Alexandra Bridge, then-Ottawa police chief Vern White and then-Gatineau police chief Mario Harel marched alongside hundreds of supporters to honour the life of Alain Brosseau. PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER PIKE /Postmedia
“The (integrated project team) is sensitive to a noteworthy historical event which will be considered when engaging in stakeholder consultations with members of the LGBTQ2+ community,” the overview document states. “On August 21, 1989, a notable murder was committed on the bridge due to the murderer’s assumption that the victim was homosexual. This tragedy and its causes led to widespread shock in the city, mobilization of the LGBTQ2+ community (which had long been the target of violence in the area) and the introduction of unprecedented police reforms. In its wake, the Ottawa Police Service would pioneer diversity training and become the first in the country to establish a hate crimes unit.”
Offering another example of heritage that needs to be commemorated, Jeanes said a key aspect of the history of the existing bridge was its role as a link in Canada’s nation-building transcontinental railway system and related economic development.
“It was critically important in railway history. It was part of the transcontinental railway from Montreal to Vancouver, from 1902 until 1966,” said Jeanes. “Canada’s signature train, The Canadian, crossed that bridge in both directions every day, every one of those 64 years.”
In a 2020 online survey about the impending bridge project, when asked to identify the issue that most concerned them about the work ahead, the public said “loss of the unique character and heritage features of the Alexandra Bridge” was No. 1 for them. PHOTO BY TONY CALDWELL /Postmedia
But just as the railway network had its role in the creation of a sea-to-sea-sea Canada, it also facilitated the displacement and dispossession of Indigenous peoples across the country. That double-edged part of Canadian rail history was highlighted during the recent unveiling of the former Prince of Wales railway bridge west of downtown Ottawa as a repurposed, active-transportation crossing renamed the Chief William Commanda Bridge after the revered Ottawa-area Algonquin leader who died in 2011.
It’s perhaps noteworthy that only seven respondents to the 2020 online public survey conducted by the NCC and PSPC identified retaining the name “Alexandra Bridge” for a new crossing as a heritage-preservation priority. Erecting historical placards and other displays was the top answer (650 mentions out of nearly 3,000 respondents), reusing material from the original bridge in a new structure was No. 2 (441 mentions) and “restore rather than replace” the current bridge was No. 3 (219 mentions).
The survey results suggest (but hardly guarantee) there wouldn’t be great resistance to renaming the crossing — which honours Queen Alexandra, consort of King Edward VII, who ascended the throne after the death of Queen Victoria in the same year the original bridge was opened. (As it happens, the former Prince of Wales Bridge was named for the future Edward VII after it was built in 1880.)
Jeanes himself played a cameo part in the history of the Alexandra Bridge — though he doesn’t put it quite like that. In 2001, when the structure reached its 100th anniversary, the heritage advocate organized a commemorative event that attracted politicians and other dignitaries from both sides of the river. They gathered at the south-end viewing platform, heard speeches about the importance of the bridge in Ottawa and Canadian history, and watched an Outaouais transit bus — “with its destination sign reading ‘Interprovincial 100,’ ” Jeanes recalled — recreate the inaugural crossing of the Alexandra a century earlier.
“I’m passionate about this bridge,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking at that time of the bridge having a finite life.”
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