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| Street View, Jan 2009 |
Obviously, the middle lane is a variable rush hour lane.
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| Street View, Sep 2015 |
This bridge crosses a channel that is north of an island.
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| JacquesCartierChamplain (I finally found the English version.) |
Helen Cooper posted two photos with the comment:
This was a trip to Montreal in February of 2021!This was taken on Île St Hélène looking at the Jacques Cartier bridge and has 4 ships in the pic!!! I was pretty excited to find this gem of a spot!! 🤪
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| Bonjour-Hi Québec posted Why is the Jacques Cartier Bridge Crooked? The Jacques Cartier Bridge was inaugurated on May 24, 1930, nearly five years to the day after ground was first broken. Starting in 1926, a series of expropriations decimated the working-class neighbourhood of Ste. Marie. Construction was known to start in the backyards of homes that had been expropriated but not yet demolished. However, one property owner wouldn't budge. Hector Barsalou stubbornly refused to sell his soap company, being the only soap company in Montréal at the time, and considered an essential service, the factory remained, and the bridge would have to follow a pronounced curve. It was soon known as “the crooked bridge.” |
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| Montreal Golden Oldies posted |
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| JacquesCartierChamplain-about |
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| Brochure |
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| Caribb Flickr, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeWorks (CC BY-NC-ND) via HistoricBridges Driving above it all... This picture gives a bit of the sense of height of the Jacques Cartier Bridge. It's impressive and somewhat of a symbol of Montreal... but it's also a traffic hell at rush hour and has been a suicide jump off point for many people. |
The bridge has a multipurpose path on the west side.
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| JacquesCartierChamplain-path "You can cross the St. Lawrence River by bike, and even take the access ramp to spend some time at Parc Jean-Drapeau, thanks to the Jacques Cartier Bridge multipurpose path. Located on the upstream side of the bridge, the 2.7-km [1.7 mile] path lets you admire a spectacular view of downtown, Mount Royal and the Old Port." |
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| Flickr "Representation of the construction of the main span of the Jacques Cartier Bridge in 1930" |
I was surprised in the above photo that the south channel was clear in 1930. Now it has multiple channels. The far channel is the South Shore Canal, which is part of the St. Lawrence Seaway. And then I noticed that the main island has "grown" downstream.
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| 3D Satellite |
Some sources dated the bridge as 1931. That is when it was scheduled to be completed. But it finished significantly earlier in Sep 1929. Note that there was water south of the anchor pier back then. Today the island extends all the way out to that pier.
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| Association for Great Lakes Maritime History posted The Canada Steamship Lines steamer Quebec circa 1937 (Image Source: Library & Archives Canada). The bridge in the background is the Jacques Cartier Bridge across the St. Lawrence River at Montreal, Que. which was completed in September 1929. [The description continues with a history of the Quebec.] |
The section over the Seaway has a clearance of 36.6m (120'). [Brochure]
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| Street View, Jul 2022 |
Both of the Flickr photos have a link back to an album that contains many more photos of the bridge.
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| Flickr |
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| JacquesCartierChamplain-about The bridge was repainted during 1989-2000 and the deck was replaced during 2001-2002. |
Upstream of this bridge on the South Shore Canal is the St. Lambert Seaway Lock. Normally, next to a lock is a dam. But I could not find one. Instead, there was a rapids here, and they built a dyke along the south shore to the headwaters of the rapids.
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| Satellite |
Note that the South Shore Canal is rather wide under the Champlain Bridge.
I recall going over this bridge scaring me when I was a kid.
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