Colby Cosh: Saskatoon's bridge to reconciliation ... is out just now, I'm afraid

A new bridge is being constructed to replace the city's circa 1907 'Traffic Bridge' (yes, that was its real name). Guess what city council has named it?

Saskatoon, Sask., is where the rubber really meets the road on the issue of aboriginal-settler coexistence. So what do you say we check in on what’s happening over there? It turns out to be a hot argument over the official name of the city’s Traffic Bridge across the South Saskatchewan River. And I guess I have to start this by affirming for skeptical readers that, yes, that is the actual name: it’s the Traffic Bridge.

I know what you are thinking. Aren’t all man-made bridges intended for traffic? If a visitor to Saskatoon got directions that included “then you take the Traffic Bridge … ,” wouldn’t that be a little confusing? The answers are “Yes, they are,” and “Yes, it is,” but bear with me.

The Traffic Bridge was built in 1907, and is an important part of the story of Saskatoon. The new bridge connected distinct communities on either side of the river, allowing them to amalgamate and grow into today’s Prairie colossus. The only existing bridge on that part of the river was a railroad bridge, not available to private vehicles and pedestrians. If you wanted to do business on both sides you had to take a ferry. This is why it came to be called the Traffic Bridge: it was for local traffic, rather than being part of a greater transport network.

Saskatoon city council has rejected a request to rename its Traffic Bridge to honour reconciliation efforts with Indigenous people. Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Unfortunately, the ungrateful city, soon supplied with many other traffic crossings, allowed the faithful old Traffic Bridge to fall into disrepair. In 2010 the bridge failed an inspection, a possible collapse was declared “imminent” by the mayor, and the structure had to be demolished. Again, I think I can anticipate what’s in your mind right now: “Oh, so Saskatoon will get a new bridge, and they’ll appreciate the chance to give it a more dignified name, or just a less weird one.”

The replacement for the annihilated Traffic Bridge is, in fact, scheduled to open in the fall. It has been designed to resemble the old bridge closely, and if that seems like a mysterious manifestation of sentiment, it gets more mysterious still: on Tuesday Saskatoon’s council decided, after a short debate, that the new bridge will also be called the Traffic Bridge.

There had been a local movement to call the replaced structure the “TRC Bridge” to salute the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools. I cannot say that I am a huge fan of this idea, even as a gesture of goodwill toward aboriginal Saskatonians. I suspect that if we looked we could probably find an actual aboriginal person from Saskatoon’s history to honour, or we could look for a name in one of the aboriginal languages that were suppressed by old-time government schooling.

Saskatoon’s original Traffic Bridge is seen in 2014 before its demolition. Greg Pender/Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Naming something for a “Commission” seems a bit generic and sad. But I don’t live in Saskatoon, and, anyway, that was the idea that got put forward, and which found some support.

The council voted 7-3 in favour of maintaining the name “Traffic Bridge,” which seems a reductio ad absurdum for the argument, often heard when the names of monuments and structures come up for revision, that we shouldn’t try to rewrite or bowdlerize history. You have heard these arguments, read them in this paper: once a school is named for a bishop or a prime minister, we can’t touch it, for to do so would be to break faith with the past — “our” past.

But I bet you have not heard them in such a strange context before. We have a continuing obligation to solemnize the legendary awesomeness of … traffic?

Yet such arguments were made. The Star-Phoenix’s Phil Tank tells us that some councillors were sympathetic to the natural view of the outsider: one asked whether they’re not all “traffic bridges,” another dared to assert that a new bridge deserves a new name, and a third complained that the whole debate “makes us look kind of crazy.” But these people were outvoted by those who wanted to keep an awkward 1907 name for a 2018 bridge, because history is something received once, and for good.

I get it, I really do. The name “Traffic Bridge” is part of the Saskatoon story, and if people are bound to keep using the old name anyway, as they surely are, choosing a new one is just wasteful and confusing. “Traffic Bridge” is so otiose that it has a certain charm (can you cross it to go eat at “Food Restaurant”?). Maybe you have to explain the name briefly to a visitor, and maybe they accidentally absorb a little piece of Prairie lore in the bargain.

Early bridges for public use in river cities inevitably involved terrific financial and political struggles. We should never take bridges for granted, although maybe Saskatoon needed to hear this before it let the original Traffic Bridge become too dangerous to exist. There’s a reason bridges are the go-to metaphor for peaceful cohabitation.

But the people who were hoping to rename it the “TRC Bridge” may not see things in that light, and I would not necessarily expect them to. They may feel that this decision was a small, gratuitous act of settler reaction, founded on a slightly preposterous justification.

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