Spanning the years
Skyway is a tale of tolls, trolls, twins -- and a bridge to somewhere
October 29, 2008
Paul Wilson
The Hamilton Spectator
On a cold but sunny day 50 years ago, a crowd gathered on a windy span high over the Beach Strip and the premier of Ontario declared the Burlington Bay Skyway officially open.
Such a bridge had been talked about for decades, so all were jubilant that it had finally come to pass.
But maybe that was actually a dark day for Hamilton.
From Oct. 30, 1958, onward, millions have been awed by the smoky, sooty, fiery panorama of this city.
"How can anyone live down there?" the passersby wonder. If they entered the city at the other end of the harbour, they would understand. They would move here.
Long ago, there was talk of a tunnel instead of a bridge, which would have changed everything. Didn't happen.
Instead they spent nearly $20 million on the Skyway, three kilometres long on 76 piers. It was the longest bridge in Canada when it opened.
Hamilton never seemed to worry about the bird's-eye view such a bridge would bring. But the city did worry about the name.
The Hamilton Chamber of Commerce petitioned Queen's Park, insisting that the water out there wasn't Burlington Bay anymore. It was Hamilton Harbour and the name of the bridge should reflect that.
That went nowhere.
The Skyway was built to address Canada's worst bottleneck. Traffic would back up for miles on the Beach Strip whenever the bascule bridge swung out of the way for a lake boat on the canal.
In April 1952, a long sand carrier called the W.E. Fitzgerald did motorists a favour and knocked the little bridge into the water. The Skyway -- debated since the QEW came by in 1933 -- was suddenly on the front burner.
It opened with two lanes in each direction capable of handling 50,000 vehicles a day. But you couldn't just sail across. After a 10-day grace period for rubberneckers when the bridge opened, the Skyway became Ontario's first toll bridge: 15 cents cash or 20 commuter tokens for $1.
The tolls annoyed motorists, and the takers of the tolls -- mostly war vets -- said it was no picnic out there. The steady stench of dead fish and factory fumes. The car and truck exhaust that curled up into their booths.
And the sadistic drivers who heated nickels, dimes and tokens in their car cigarette lighters and dropped the red hot currency into the toll collector's hand.
The Skyway went toll-free at the end of 1973. By then the route was clogged again. Ten years later, work began on twinning the bridge. The province said it was changing the name of the Skyway to honour a former Conservative transportation minister.
That pleased no one around here, and the compromise was the Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway. Heard anybody call it that lately?
The new twin cost twice as much as the old span. Without the pale-green steel arch, it offered none of the original's charm.
Now there are 10 lanes up there, two for emergency travel. All in all, a lot of bridge just to let 700 freighters a year steam into Hamilton Harbour.
People live in the shadow of the Skyway.
"I tell people, 'I'm a troll, I live under the bridge,'" says Norman Law, who moved into a grand 1890s cottage on the Beach Strip's bayside 35 years ago.
He has been told his place was once the summer palace of Tuckett the tobacco king.
Could be, because before it turned toxic, the bay was where people wanted to be. The boathouse is still in place, but now the bay's edge is a long way off, thanks to landfill that went in for Skyways I and II.
Law is near the bridge's approach, so the roar is considerable. He has triple-glazed his windows, made his walls double-thick.
"I can't sit in my back yard." It's storage only for treasures that include the carcass of a '57 Greyhound bus.
We move north along the Strip to the last house on the bay side before the canal.
It's just a few years old, and Kevin and Amanda White, four kids, two cats and two dogs live here.
From the front window of their raised living room, they watch the sun come up over the lake. From the back, they see that sun go down over the harbour.
The Skyway has climbed to six storeys here, so some of the roar is sent to the heavens.
The Whites don't try to ignore the big bridge. They embrace it. Out in their back yard, there's a big deck, a pool and a hot tub.
They relax here under a sky as big as the Prairies -- a sky with a towering sculpture that the Whites share with 50 million motorists a year.
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