Ontario Roads - Minto Bridges

Minto Bridges, Ottawa

I'm using the Ottawa River as my "east"-"west" reference for this page, and Rideau River as "north"-"south". It cleans up the notation.


The central bridge seen from the west side (Green Island).


Driving EB across the bridges. It appears we accidentally tumbled out of the car in formation - that would be our meet photo, as featured on the Ottawa Road Meet page linked at bottom.


Details of the second bridge in the series. They're basically identical to the casual observer, even down to all having plaques, but are all different lengths. This middle bridge is also a 2-truss span, whereas the others are single-truss.


It's nice to have a painted stop sign for the bike trail, but it's not nice to maintain it like this. Also, it should probably go in the lane to which it belongs. I could argue that a standup stop sign and painted stop bar might go even farther, since at least those are familiar traffic control devices. Not everyone's looking down.


Now parked and walking back west on Union St. over the first bridge.


Looking south along the Rideau River from the eastern span (first photo) and central span. By gum, there was another bridge there! It's for a former rail spur that once began at the Ottawa River and followed what is now Vanier Parkway to the east and south. There's also a killer view of downtown, if you have a powerful enough camera.


Closer images of each rail pier, from left (east) to right (western abutment). I threw in a bonus of the eastern abutment.


Continuing west to the midpoint of the second bridge.


This has all the makings of a bad joke. Canada thought they were getting Her Majesty's royal swans, and in fact they ended up with a bunch of ducks. England had a good laugh at Canada's simplicity, while Canada remains honoured (note spelling) to this day. Well, that would be a joke made by Americans, at any rate. The Canadian version of the joke would replace these interloping ducks (all the swans are gone, sadly) with geese and spin it as a positive.

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