Incredible Crossings
The History and Art of the Bridges, Tunnels and Inland Ferries That Connect British Columbia
British Columbia has a surprising variety of bridges, with purposes ranging from crossing a river to bungee jumping, and many are graceful structures which, interpreted properly, are works of art. Lines and curves, verticals and horizontals, they are a great subject for the photographer. Photographer and historian Derek Hayes has scoured the province to find bridges with interesting stories and artistic structures, combining artistic images and intriguing history in this unique book.
It turns out there are far more superlatives in the province that you’d think. The very nature of the topography of BC has meant that engineers have had to be innovative in their solutions to many formidable barriers, and the province has many rivers and mountain torrents that had to be bridged to create both railway connections and the modern road network. Their vital nature was exposed in November 2021 when so many bridges in the Coquihalla and Nicola valleys were wrecked by floods and landslides.There are well over 3,000 bridges in BC, and this book looks at some of the most interesting.
The stories include bridge collapses and demolitions by explosions, bridges that have been moved, some just a little bit while a replacement was built, and some disassembled and transported to a completely different area of the province. There are suspension bridges, cable-stayed bridges, extradosed bridges, and many types of both wooden and steel trusses, an endless variety to challenge the photographer. Even a natural bridge. There were five covered bridges, one of which remains today. There is a bridge made of two bridges. And the there is a bridge designed by Ricardo Morandi, architect of the freeway bridge that collapsed in Genoa, Italy, in 2018, an incident that prompted a rapid safety inspection of the one in BC. There is one location that over the years has seen no fewer than ten bridges, not to mention a ferry!
Incredible Crossings: The History and Art of the Bridges, Tunnels and Inland Ferries that Connect British Columbia is far more than just a survey of the province’s interesting bridges, and includes hundreds of stunning photographs and a wealth of historical text.
Hardcover 320 pages. Published 26 November 2022 by Harbour Publishing