1932: Broadway Bridge opens, designed by Dean of Engineering

In the late 1920s, a consultant to the City of Saskatoon’s Planning Board recommended that “a downtown commercial area could be saved from becoming a slum by building a bridge linking Broadway Avenue to it.”  C.J. Mackenzie, the Dean of Engineering, who had a strong interest in city planning, lobbied for the project – but was told by the Mayor of Saskatoon that if he wanted to see the project go ahead he should run for City Council and speak from “the seat of power.”  He did run, and was elected, and during his term in office the project was approved and the necessary bylaw was passed.  But it may only have been the advent of the Great Depression and federal make-work projects that saved that Broadway Bridge project from taking several years to be initiated.  The project was approved as a federal make-work project in November 1931 (with funding from the city and provincial governments as well), and full-scale work began in late December 1931 – piers needed to be built while the river was still frozen.  Dean Mackenzie took a leave of absence from the University to accept the contract to design and build the bridge, while his engineering staff consisted entirely of recent College of Engineering graduates.  Over 1,500 men worked on the job.  Nicknamed the “Engineer’s Bridge” or “Dean’s Bridge,” the Broadway Bridge was officially opened on 11 November 1932 and was known as one of the finest structures of its kind in Canada. 

A few years later, the Dean’s “bridge team” was responsible for the Ceepee bridge across the North Saskatchewan River between Saskatoon and the Battlefords, later called the Borden Bridge.  For his master’s thesis, the chief draftsman for the Broadway Bridge project, Beverley Evans, was designing a reinforced bowstring arch concrete bridge which would be suitable for this kind of crossing.  The design was accepted by the federal government as the basis for another make-work project, and the Borden Bridge (along with the thesis) was completed by late 1936.

Related Collections

C.J. Mackenzie fonds, MG 56

Images

1932a: Construction of the first arch, May 1932. C.J. Mackenzie fonds, MG 56, file 2-13.
1932b: The final stages of construction: removing the arch centering piles, December 1932. C.J. Mackenzie fonds, MG 56, file 2-13.

Sources

Kerr & Hanson, pp. 304-307.
1. Quotes from Macdonald, pp. 59-62.