Perhaps strangely, Sudbury.com readers have some very specific memories of the Old Iron Bridge on Nelson Street, some of which are so sensory specific, the memories can transport them back to an earlier time.
The bridge was a landmark for so many people that even media advertising would use its location as a frame of reference for potential clients. As the late Bob Derro once wrote in reminiscing about the bridge, “Gosh, how many commercials did I read for "Christakos’, near the Iron Bridge.”
Some of our readers wrote that their memory of the sound made while travelling across the bridge has stood the test of time in their lives.
Dan Oeschler wrote onomatopoeically, “Clickity-clack was the sound I remember when driving over it.”
Alasdair MacLeod remembers this vividly as well, he “still remember(s) the rickety noisy steel plating as you drove across.” And, Louise Jeannette Rodger also chimed in since she “used to love traveling on this bridge in the car as a child, it had a distinctive sound as you drove over it.”
Now, sound was not the only sensory experience tied to the bridge. For Janna Marie Reid, who professed to have “loved the bridge,” she still remembers the “creosote type of smell and the odour of the railway.” To which she added, “when we reached the bridge we knew we weren't far from the park after a long walk!”
Rita Delongchamp-Osborne’s memory concurs, writing “that bridge meant we were heading or returning to the Lake for fun times.” While, Barb Upton added to that feeling: “we walked across that bridge many, many times. Bouncy, happy on our way to Bell Park. Tired, but still happy on the way home! Well worth the walk!”
Just like these readers, Claude Mailloux’s memories of the bridge are wrapped up in the daily comings and goings of his youth.
“Life was so simple back then,” Claude said. “(We would) cross the Iron Bridge just about every day in the 50s and early 60s on our way to Bell Park.” As well, “we (would) always stop at the little corner store for a popsicle (at first 2 cents then 5 cents). The odd time we would explore the Bell house (we thought it was haunted). Most of the time we would make our way down the shoreline to Hermit Bay for a swim.”
A reader on our website who lived in the West End remembers “catch(ing) a city bus, which dropped me off at Elm and Elgin, and then I would walk the rest of the way, all the way to the bridge and then down to Bell Park … this took place in the late 1950s and early 60s. It was a long hike, but great when you finally got down to the lake.”
As reader Bob Polmateer made it clear in one simple statement about the bridge, it was “our easy access to Bell Park.”
Scott Fraser remembers that the bridge was the gateway for him and his siblings to participate in activities that would strengthen them and shape their future. As he wrote, in a reminiscence that is a perfect encapsulation of a mid-20th century summer’s day for many children, “I was one of nine children living on Lakeshore (later Howey Drive) at Somerset Street. My mother signed us up for all three swim sessions at Bell Park, cold as hell in Lake Ramsay in August. Packed us a lunch and we did not return until supper time. We got 20 cents a day. Five cents each way on the bus which would drop you off at the bridge and ten cents to spend at the concession stand which got you a bag of popcorn. If you walked home you had an extra nickel to spend the next day toward a cone of 15-cent fries. Never failed to try and spit down the diesel engine smoke stack as it passed under the bridge.”
Fraser’s sister, Lorrie Moshenko, concurred with her brother’s feelings, though she did have something to say about his mid-bridge salivary activities. She writes that, “these were the special memories from the past that formed our resiliency and strength for our future. As the eldest of these nine kids, it was great … EXCEPT when Scott would try and spit down the smoke stack as it passed under the bridge!!”
Another reader, Marge Wallace crossed that bridge all of the time except, unlike Scott Fraser, she writes that “we used to run so we would miss the black smoke of the train going under.” On the other hand, readers such as Stuart Macadam “spent many summer days on the bridge (just) watching the trains below.” Interestingly, no other mention of spitting into the engine smokestacks has been recorded.
Needless to say, one didn’t necessarily have to look over the side of the bridge to see the trains passing beneath. As Lillian Rosenthal remembers it, “there was a place for people to walk on the side (of the bridge, and) you could see the train tracks below through the wooden planks.”
One of our readers remembers an unfortunate close call while travelling on the bridge. Mary Giroux was “riding across this bridge, north bound in heavy traffic. My bike slipped on the wet, steel surface. I jumped from the bike and hugged a beam. I have no idea where that acrobatic move came from.” Luckily, as she concluded, “Neither bike nor rider were hurt.”
Some of our readers spent so much time using the bridge for travelling they practically wore grooves into its surface. For instance, as D’Arcy Laplante writes, “I lived three houses down on Morris Street … . When my daughter was in school, my wife used to cross the bridge four times a day walking our daughter to Alexander Public School, getting her for lunch and then getting her after school.”
While, another reader, Jill Marion, travelled the bridge by every conceivable mode of transportation (except the streetcar it seems), as she wrote that she “had many a passing over that bridge, by car, transit bus, bicycle or walking.”
Although the streetcar service in Sudbury ended in 1950 (a story for another day), a few of our readers were able to reach back into their memory banks to a time when they (or family) took the streetcar across the bridge.
Roma Cecutti wrote that her family lived on Edmund Street on the lake side of the bridge and “my brother Jack Porter, would get on the streetcar with his hockey bag, then transfer downtown to a Copper Cliff streetcar to play hockey at Stanley Stadium. He was between 10 and 12 at the time.” She added that she remembers “Inco workers used the same streetcar (as) not many people owned cars … we certainly didn’t.”
After the demise of the streetcar, some readers remember its presence was still felt when one was crossing the bridge. Stuart Macadam “remembers the streetcar tracks coming through the asphalt at the corner of John and Nelson in the early 60s.”
Adam Spindler also “remembers the tracks embedded in the asphalt remained on the bridge for many years after the streetcars stopped running.” This was a curiosity to him as a child. “I always wondered what they were there for,” he writes.
Some of our readers were so enamoured with the Nelson Street Bridge that when they grew up they were drawn back into its general vicinity. Leo James Mitchell crossed “that bridge many times when I was very young, taking the streetcar to Bell Park on Ramsey Lake.” Then, later, he returned to use the bridge again “when I taught in the area I lived on Paris Street and often crossed it.”
Reader Sandra Thibault, in her comment, laughs, “It's funny, I remember taking that bridge to go to the lake and now I live on Nelson.” While Richard Hoeg writes that he is “very fond of this bridge on both sides! (Initially) family drove across it to go to our camp, and (then) working for CP running under it with trains!” As he puts it, when he would see the bridge, “I knew I was home.”
Richard Généreux, also has memories tied to the bridge relating to different parts of his life. “I remember watching trains from there as a kid,” he wrote, “then one day I was working for CPR looking up at that bridge from below, remembering.”
Readers who were old enough to be driving during the age of the “Iron Bridge” as the major travelling route across the CPR railyard still remember the absolute traffic nightmare that existed in that area.
Lynn Latreille recalls travel directions that would even confound Google Maps. “Before the Paris Street Bridge was built,” she writes, “we would turn right on John Street and go two blocks to Nelson Street then turn left and cross over the old Nelson Street Iron Bridge and left on Elgin Street to get downtown.” Due to this kind of street navigating, she continued, “traffic was always backed up!”
Imagine trying to explain these types of directions to an out of town visitor sitting at the corner of Paris and John Streets? (“What do you mean I’ve got to do all that driving just to go 150m north of here?”)
Speaking of the Paris Street Bridge, Steven Vallarsa added, though he was “sad to see it go (along with the Texaco station at John & Nelson, he added), he was “not sad to see that awkward zigzag you had to make to go from downtown to Paris Street” be eliminated. And, for Brenda Leuschen Farkas, she writes, “all I remember was the horrendous traffic leading to the bridge.”
Reader Randy Dutchburn was most likely not the only one, but said that he “always seemed to get stuck in the middle of (the bridge) waiting for the light to change and watching as one of the old Local Lines buses came across from town.”
When it came down to the end of the line for the Bridge, some readers implied that they were not surprised at all that it was not salvageable. As Randy Dutchburn wrote, “it always felt like it was going to collapse with all of the shaking and bouncing around going on.”
While, Peter Trottier, who’s uncle lived on John Street, so he spent a lot of time around the bridge, also wrote in regard to its decline. “I remember crossing that bridge just before it closed and it was some scary … . I think at the end it was in such poor shape it was closed to one lane. I remember pieces of 2X12 (boards) covering holes in the bridge deck.”
June-Marie Charlwood, on the other hand, was shocked by its disappearance from the Sudbury landscape. As she wrote, “we left Sudbury in 1961 and the bridge was still there. Imagine my surprise returning in the 1980s on vacation going to show hubby and the kids my sights and fun places and it was gone.”
Reader Wayne Hugli “remembers driving over that bridge on my way from Coniston and Garson to courses at Laurentian University back in the 1970s,” but added that “the Bridge of Nations is certainly a better route.”
Stephen Maclean lamented the bridge’s loss, as “the historic built form (had) a value.” To which he added, “the old Iron Bridge could have been turned into the pedestrian bridge with greenery along the ledges to prevent things being thrown over and therefore no need for the tight rusty wire mesh that (the most recent pedestrian bridge) had.”
Well, dear readers, this week’s edition of Memory Lane has come to an end. Thank you for sharing with us so many ironclad memories from your steel-trap minds. You have certainly all shown that the Nelson Street Bridge, your beloved “Iron Bridge” was, what reader Bob Polmateer called, “a childhood icon.” See you here again in two weeks for another trip back through time.
Jason Marcon is a writer and history enthusiast in Greater Sudbury. He runs the Coniston Historical Group and the Sudbury Then and Now Facebook page. Memory Lane is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.