Video: Team that restored a historic Mississauga bridge wins a heritage award

A team that saved a 113-year-old Mississauga bridge has won a heritage award.

A team contracted to save the Middle Road Bridge won the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO) Peter Stokes Restoration Award: Small-Scale/Individual/Small Business for the rehabilitation of the historically significant bridge, the ACO announced recently.

Built in 1909, the Middle Road Bridge (also known as Sherway Heritage Bridge) is the first example of a reinforced concrete truss or tied arch bridge in Canada, the ACO noted.

The bridge crosses Etobicoke Creek between the Queensway and the QEW highway, connecting Mississauga and Etobicoke.

There were no original drawings of the bridge, which presented a challenge for rehabilitation.

A structural team from AECOM, a construction engineering company, used research from the Heritage Impact Assessment, including a 1909 article by bridge engineers, Barber & Young, to confirm how the bridge was intended to function.

“The project highlights the importance of a multi-disciplinary team including a heritage specialist, structural engineers, municipalities, and other stakeholders, working together to evaluate and rehabilitate the Middle Road Bridge,” the ACO notes. “Understanding the bridge was the key to saving it.”

The project was completed in 2022.

The Oculus Revitalization team was the only other team nominated in the category. That team restored the once-neglected Oculus pavilion in Toronto’s South Humber Park, transforming it into a vibrant community space.

The award is named after Peter Stokes who began his career in 1958 as the restoration architect for Upper Canada Village, where he stayed until 1961.

He is known for the restoration work he did in his adopted hometown of Niagara-on-the-Lake, and then throughout Ontario for such projects as Sandyford Place in Hamilton, Victoria Hall in Cobourg, and the Grange in Toronto.

Stokes died in 2013.