Home > Bloor Street Viaduct

The official name of the bridge is the Prince Edward Viaduct; in still more precise usage, this term also includes a smaller bridge carrying Bloor Street over the Rosedale Ravine, and the embankment built at the same time to connect the two.

The bridge was completed in 1919; it is 490 meters long and 40 meters high. A feature of both the main bridge and the Rosedale Ravine bridge, controversial at the time for cost reasons, was the provision for a lower deck for rail transport. The bridge's designer, Edmund Burke , was able to have his way, and this eventually proved to save millions of dollars when the TTC's Bloor-Danforth subway, opened in 1966, used the bridge to cross the Don Valley (but not the Rosedale Ravine, where a separate bridge was built).

The construction of the bridge was used as a setting for the historical fiction of Michael Ondaatje's novel In the Skin of a Lion.

The Viaduct was the site of frequent suicide attempts. The viaduct has been the site of over 400 suicides, second only to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A 1997 report from the SchizophreniaSchizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis denoting a persistent, often chronic, mental illness variously affecting behaviour, thinking, and emotion. The term schizophrenia comes from the Greek words schizo split or divide) and phrenos mind) and is best tra Society of Ontario cited the average of one person jumping from the bridge every 22 days. After years of controversy, the bridge's reputation as a "suicide magnet" eventually led to the construction of a suicide barrier called the Luminous VeilThe Luminous Veil is a suicide barrier added to the Bloor Street Viaduct in Toronto, Canada. First approved by the Toronto City Coucil in 1998, the construction of the Luminous Veil was delayed for years due to funding concerns. During the delays in const. Designed by architect Derek Revington and completed in 20032003 is a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar), and also: The International Year of Freshwater The European Disability Year Summary Perhaps the defining global event of the year 2003 was the Invasion of Iraq launched by the U at the cost of $6.5 millionThe Canadian dollar CAD or C is the unit of currency of Canada. It is divided into 100 cents (¢). History Canada decided to use the dollar instead of a pound sterling system because of the ubiquity of Spanish dollars in North America in the 18th century a, it consists of over 9,000 steel rods stretched to cantilevered girders. In consequence, the Bloor Street Viaduct has lost its ranking as the second largest suicide magnet to the Jacques Cartier BridgeThe Jacques Cartier Bridge is a steel truss cantilever bridge crossing the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal Island, Montreal, Quebec to the south shore at Longueuil, Quebec, Canada. Locally, it is also known as the Pont de la rive-sud (South Shore Bridg in Montreal, Quebec.