Editor's note: This story was originally published Aug. 5, 2016. It is being reshared ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Heron Road Bridge collapse on Aug. 10, 1966.
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George Davis peered over the edge of the bridge and turned to his co-worker, Mike Graham.
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“I wonder if a person would survive if he fell off this thing,” he said.
Graham said he doubted it. It was almost a 20-metre drop, like jumping off a five-storey building.
It was just after three in the afternoon of Aug. 10, 1966, as the pair of young construction workers stood atop the south span of the Heron Road Bridge. When completed in two months’ time, the bridge would connect motorists on Baseline Road, which at the time ended at Prince of Wales Drive, with those on Heron Road, and allow the public to cross the wide ravine cut away by the Rideau River and Canal just north of Hog’s Back Falls.
It was a cloudy but gorgeous summer day — 26 C with a moderate breeze blowing in from the west. Workers were nearing the end of a long shift pouring some 2,000 tons of concrete on the eastern portion of the 70-metre south span. The workday was pretty much over for Davis and Graham who, as rodmen, or surveyors, had little to do once the concrete was being poured.
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