The Pretoria Avenue Bridge—old and new
This paper describes a historic civil engineering bridge site on the Rideau Canal. The history of the site is traced from 1882, when the first bridge was built, to the time of the existing modern structure. Most of the bridges were of the movable type, being either swing or vertical lift structures. The present bridge, which was built in 1980–1981, was designed taking into consideration many of the historic features of past bridges especially the latter bridge, which was built in 1915–1917. Various technical features of the new bridge enhance one's perspective of modem design methods when they are compared with past state-of-the-art methods. The resulting bridge is a functional structure that maintains the heritage of the historic bridges and at the same time blends with the environment.