Canadian Bridge Company – Part 1

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• Manitoba Telephone currently owns the tower but does not have any specs or drawings for it. Thanks for the reply, I am trying my contacts at Hydro One now.

  I do work with a lot of communication towers for sure, mainly with the SHF range though.

• Nate, I was referring to a Company in Elmira called "VHF Construction". I have a neighbor named Nate who works for them and thought it was you!

• Apparently Mr. J.A. Pretty of the Company was superintendent of construction for every steel bridge built on the main line of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway between Winnipeg, through Edmonton, to Tete Jeune Cache BC. Obviously the Company supplied the steel for these bridges which were built between ca 1905 and 1911.

• that's quite the contract! GT should've took the contract to build that whole ribbon of iron across the country when it was offred to them. They'd be in CP's shoes today if they had.

• I worked for Canadain Bridge for 2 years i didn't work really hard i can't remember what plant it was i worked in but we were building hydro tower sections that were put into railroad cars and shipped out west i remember i had to enter the plant off st luke road to punch in but worked in the other plant closer to walker rd great bunch of co workers

• Interesting. Ran across your site while following leads on bridges in Northern Ontario. If you ever go to Manitoulin Island by road then you cross a Canadian Bridge Company construction at Little Current. The swing bridge is still a tourist attraction when it opens for boat traffic. 97 years old and still swinging. The following site give some of the history.
  http://www.magma.ca/~morcomp/lcswing.html

• I worked at the former canadian bridge company from 1983 -1988. It was hawker siddeley canada at the time.We built log skidders,which are very large tractors in the forestry industry.The were called tree farmers.All the fabrication was done in windsor frames, dozer blades,buckets and then shipped to Alabama for assembly.Free trade came in and we closed they moved the fabrication to Alabama.My father worked there for 39 yrs. Retired in 1986,Plant 1 was on walker road plant 2 was off st.luke. Plant number two had the tower shop where they used to fabricate and galvanize the steel required for the hydro towers being built.Then it was shipped out and set up by the erection crew (a crew of men that erected the towers in the field).Those 2 towers on the property that someone spoke of in another post were called the test towers.They would assemble a hydro tower on the site and rig it with cables to the test towers and bend them literally like banannas for strength testing.The tower shop closed in 1975.There are still a few of the old guys out there that I havent spoken to in a number of years ,but are still alive in their 80's and 90's that i worked with. In regards to plant number 1, I dont no to much about it as it was a very old building going back to the 1800's and they used to use horses to move steel and stuff. The ambassador bridge was partly built by the canadian bridge company and mostly every train bridge in Canada from the 1800's up to the 1900's as well.The mackinac bridge railings were built by the c.b.c. as well.

• I worked at the former canadian bridge company from 1983 -1988. It was hawker siddeley canada at the time.We built log skidders,which are very large tractors in the forestry industry.The were called tree farmers.All the fabrication was done in windsor frames, dozer blades,buckets and then shipped to Alabama for assembly.Free trade came in and we closed they moved the fabrication to Alabama.My father worked there for 39 yrs. Retired in 1986,Plant 1 was on walker road plant 2 was off st.luke. Plant number two had the tower shop where they used to fabricate and galvanize the steel required for the hydro towers being built.Then it was shipped out and set up by the erection crew (a crew of men that erected the towers in the field).Those 2 towers on the property that someone spoke of in another post were called the test towers.They would assemble a hydro tower on the site and rig it with cables to the test towers and bend them literally like banannas for strength testing.The tower shop closed in 1975.There are still a few of the old guys out there that I havent spoken to in a number of years ,but are still alive in their 80's and 90's that i worked with. In regards to plant number 1, I dont no to much about it as it was a very old building going back to the 1800's and they used to use horses to move steel and stuff. The ambassador bridge was partly built by the canadian bridge company and mostly every train bridge in Canada from the 1800's up to the 1900's as well.The mackinac bridge railings were built by the c.b.c. as well. There ia a lot of history for this company in windsor and if anyone requires any additional info contact me and will do what i can...

• My grampa Ed Greenshields worked for them. He was a foreman i believe. He helped build the bridge and tunnel in Windsor. My mom said he always had a job even during the depression. He always told me he could get me a job there. My fear of heights pretty much ruled that out.

• Seeing the picture of the Dominion Brige Office Building brought back memories of travelling north on Walker Road and smelling the fresh bread being made at Canada Bread that was located just north of Richmand street past the electical sub station and the Fire Hall all on the West side of Walker Road. If I remember correctly the Office building was on the west side of Walker Road between Ottawa St and Ontario St. and south of the office building they had tennis courts that always seem to be busy as we passed by. The east side of Walker accross from the office building had the manufacturing building and a huge outside storage area along with the towers that have been mentioned where they assembled towers prior to shipping them out on flat cars you could see them building them then disassembling them Those where great days and a lot of memories still exsist from back then.