Here we are under two bridges: the Shannon Bridge, which was built in 1879, and Le Pont des Irlandais, built in 2016. At one time there was another bridge here, a wooden bridge that had been built in 1869 for the “Gosford & Quebec Wooden Railway”. It lasted less than 10 years.
Unlike the latter, the Shannon Bridge has now lasted for more than 140 years. It is a major part of Quebec’s historic industrial heritage and an excellent example of early railway engineering. Built in 1879 as a railway bridge and transformed into a road bridge in the early 1930s, it is now the road bridge with the oldest Phoenix-style steel trusses in Quebec and is amongst the oldest metal bridges in the country.
The bridge was designed and built by Clarke, Reeves & Co. of Pennsylvania using Phoenix or Keystone columns. Its masonry pillars and pedestals were built by Mr. Barnabas Gibson, a contractor from Whitby, Ontario. The bridge was used by the “Quebec and Lake St. John Railway”, the “Canadian Northern Railway” and the “Canadian National Railway (CN)”. In 1919, however, the bridge was forced to close to rail traffic on the Gosford Spur because it had become too fragile to support locomotives which, over the years, had become heavier and heavier. Even so, in 1901, in order to straighten out the railway, and thus avoid an inconvenient curve on the north side of the Jacques-Cartier River, a new railway bridge had been built about a kilometer downstream from here.That bridge still exists today and serves as part of a bicycle path that reaches from Quebec City to Rivière-à-Pierre.
After the closure to rail traffic on the Shannon Bridge, access was limited to those who wanted to cross on foot, on horseback or by car. From 1919 to 1929, a man named Edmond Conway rented the railway’s bridge to transport wood with a horse-drawn rail wagon.
Two ferries had also been available for those in the area who needed to traverse the river. The first was a wooden barge with three-foot-high guardrails. It could accommodate up to four horses and was controlled by solid cables. It was powered by a winch operated by a ferryman. Located about six and a half kilometers upstream from here, it operated until the expropriation of that area in 1914.
Because of that expropriation, a second ferry became necessary. It was put into service just upstream of the dam located but a few meters from here. That ferry was used by citizens until 1919.
In 1920, citizens received a grant from the government to build the bridge to accommodate motor vehicles. The tracks were kept to honour Mr. Conway’s lease, but wooden plank trailers and guardrails were added for passing cars and trucks. It was the only hybrid hi-rail bridge in all of Quebec to share a single deck track.
Over the years, several other renovations were carried out. These renovations included the addition of a sidewalk, guardrails, new ramps, a lighting system, as well as structural and reinforcement work. In 1932, the plank floor and the rails were removed, and a new concrete slab was poured to provide a 15-foot-wide roadway. All these works did not significantly alter its appearance from that of its original construction in 1879. Today, the Shannon bridge stands as an important artifact of that unique type of structure.
The new modern bridge was built in 2016 to allow for two-way traffic. In 2020, the Quebec Ministry of Transportation officially named it “Le Pont des Irlandais”, or “The Irish Bridge”.