1929: The Saturday Afternoon Opening of a Bridge in Toronto’s Hoggs Hollow Neighborhood

In Toronto, a dedication ceremony was held for a set of highway bridges crossing the Don River Valley’s West Branch in the city’s neighborhood of Hoggs Hollow. These bridges, now collectively known as Hogg’s Hollow Bridge, were formally opened to traffic at three o’clock that Saturday afternoon. More than 1,000 people attended this event and it was George S. Henry, minister of highways of Ontario (and a future premier of this Canadian province), who cut the ribbon for the occasion.

“Prior to the cutting of the ribbon, speeches were delivered by the representatives of the municipalities interested in the work,” reported the Toronto-based Globe. “Controller Joseph Gibbons spoke for the City of Toronto, and congratulated the [County of York, dissolved in 1971] and the Township of York [now part of Toronto] in having such a beautiful structure placed on this important highway.” The Globe also stated, “Colonel George H. Little, warden of the County of York, believed the bridge would be of great local benefit as well to the public at large.”

Hogg’s Hollow Bridge currently carries 14 lanes of Ontario Highway 401 (formally named the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway). This structure has the distinction of being the busiest multi-span bridge in North America.

Photo Credit: Floydian (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

For more information on Hogg’s Hollow Bridge, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg%27s_Hollow_Bridge