By Sarah Stone

Community joins province to open new St. Louis Bridge

Oct 24, 2014 | 12:39 PM

A chilly day in St. Louis didn’t stop hundreds of community members from gathering to witness a monumental moment.

On Friday the new St. Louis Bridge officially opened to the public.

Nancy Heppner, minister of highways and infrastructure, said this new bridge will prove safe and reliable into the future.

“This is so important not just to the local community, but to the entire province,” she said.  “It’s the main corridor north-south for our province for shipping and trucking.  We’re an export province, so we need people to get our goods on the roads and out of the province and even within the province.”

This bridge, located on Highway 2 over the South Saskatchewan River, will replace the almost century-old crossing that goes right through the Village of St. Louis.  It is also the final link in a 683 km-long primary weight corridor on Hwy 2 from Assiniboia to La Ronge.

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Construction began in 2011, with the abutments and roadwork starting in 2012.  Although the highway that connects to Hwy 2 is complete on the north side of the bridge, on the south side there is still construction.  This means motorists will still need to use Hwy 25 west to Hwy 2 near St. Louis.

The cost of the new bridge was originally pegged at $30 million, but Doug Hansen, executive director of the northern region, said “… then we started detailed work to find out what the issues were actually here and the costs go up and we get more information.”

“There was a lot challenges in preliminary design work [but] the construction itself went well,” Hansen said.

After a couple of quick speeches from Heppner and Batoche MLA Delbert Kirsch, a group revealed the sign of the new St. Louis Bridge.  The dignitaries then got in their vehicles, drove through a red ribbon to be the first to cross the new bridge as the group of bystanders cheered.

Joining the crowd were many students from St. Louis Public School.  The group of students and staff walked the roughly 1.5 kilometres to the bridge to witness the event.

Matt Gray, vice principal, said they thought it would be a good idea to allow the older students a chance to watch the opening.

“It’s a big event in the community.  I mean they’ve been waiting six, seven years for this, so to get the kids out to see the opening of it we thought was a big deal,” Gray said.

Gray drives in from Prince Albert for work and he said the students asked him daily if the new bridge was open yet.

 “There’s always something about showing up and being a part of your community and the school being a part of the community and it’s a big community event so being part of that is a good thing,” he said.

One of the students is Grade 10 boy Brayden Caron.

“It’s awesome that the new bridge is open,” he said. “It’s pretty cool.”

Caron has grown up using the old bridge, but he said he didn’t think it was that bad.

“It got closed a couple of times, so we had to take detours a couple of times,” he said, but added this new bridge will be better and faster.

As for the old bridge, it will be blocked off for cars and pedestrians immediately and will be decommissioned.  However, Heppner said it will remain intact at this point.

For reaction from the St. Louis mayor and residents, check back on Saturday.

Click here for more photos. 

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84