The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
The previous two columns have outlined the events surrounding the replacement of the Tower Street and St. David Street bridges in Fergus in 1879.
The story picks up this week in September 1879.
After two years of meetings and a lawsuit, the replacement of the bridges had turned into a comedy of errors. Fergus council had called for tenders for the two bridges late in August, but a week later there were strong objections to the designs specified. In response, council decided to refer the specifications, plus another set prepared by a second engineer, to Thomas Ingles, the Guelph city engineer.
On Sept. 3, reeve Robert Steele caught the morning train for Guelph to see Ingles. He had the plans Fergus had commissioned from Elora engineer John Taylor for the two bridges, and alternate designs that Ed Parsons had presented, on his own initiative, at a public meeting. In an astonishing lapse of judgment, Steele took Parsons with him. The latter was miffed when Ingles refused to consider the two sets of plans while Parsons was in the room.
Ingles said he would prefer a couple of days to compare the plans. He said those of Parsons were unconventional, and he wished to make some calculations. Steele wanted an evaluation that afternoon if possible. Ingles reluctantly agreed, and wrote out a brief opinion in time for Steele and Parsons to catch the evening train back to Fergus.
His opinion was that the Parsons design was fundamentally unsafe, and that Taylor’s design was basically sound, but “deficient in detail.” Steele wrote Ingles the following day, asking for further explanation. In reply, Ingles believed that the truss components in Taylor’s design were out of proportion for the length of the bridge, and that the style he used, known as a queen truss, was only suitable for spans of 60 feet or less.
Weary of his continuing interference, reeve Steele and council ignored the continuing ravings from Parsons. They opened the tenders on Sept. 11.
Richard Ferguson secured the contract for the Tower Street bridge, 73 feet long and 22 feet wide, at $553. There were five other tenders, ranging to $875. Ferguson agreed to a six-week construction period.
Council had advised potential bidders for the St. David Street bridge that the specifications had changed to stone abutments. The bridge would be 103 feet long and 22 feet wide. Four contractors bid on the stone work, and four others on the bridge itself only. There were two bids for both abutments and bridge. One of them, Thomas Corbett, offered the lowest overall price at $1,450. He agreed to complete the work in eight weeks. Later in the month council approved an issue of $1,800 of debentures for the St. David Street bridge.
On Sept. 17 Parsons called on Ingles, demanding to know what specific objections Ingles had with his design. With the tenders awarded and work under way, and no desire to become further embroiled in the Fergus controversy, Ingles declined to make any suggestions to improve Parsons’s designs. He then suggested that either Parsons or Fergus council secure the opinion of a first-class structural engineer. His own work with Guelph concentrated on the city’s waterworks, and he was fully occupied with those duties. Still unsatisfied, Parsons began to air his complaints in the press.
Engineer John Taylor acted as inspector for the bridges, supervising the execution of his own designs. Work did not progress smoothly for long.
At a council meeting on Oct. 6, councillor J.W. Green-Armytage was “not at all happy” with the work that had been done on the abutments: the mortar was poor and already eroding, the foundation was on mud, rather than bedrock, and Corbett was using rubble stone rather than large pieces of cut stone. Other councillors repeated the charges. Later in the meeting council voted to dismiss John Taylor as inspector.
Council met again the following day. At first they considered asking either Parsons or Taylor to inspect the abutments. They eventually reinstated Taylor as inspector by a 3-2 vote.
On Oct. 8, at their third meeting in three days, council considered what to do with the south abutment, where the major problems seemed to be, “in view of present developments.”
Their decision was to instruct the contractor to tear the abutment down and rebuild it on bedrock. A motion to ask Tom Ingles to make an inspection of the abutments also passed.
By the next meeting, on Oct. 10, council dug in its heels, instructing the contractor to cease work at once. Councillors dismissed Taylor a second time. They went back to Ingles, asking him to recommend a course of action and what Fergus should do to confront the contractor.
Ingles wrote his report quickly, and council considered it on the morning of Oct. 14. He found the south abutment to be unsatisfactory in workmanship and materials, and recommended that it be torn down. He told council that it should be rebuilt on bedrock.
Council accepted the report, and communicated the news to contractor Corbett. Council met again that evening. Corbett had sent a note, refusing to tear down the abutment, arguing that it had already been inspected and approved by John Taylor.
Charles Young, an unsuccessful bidder on the masonry work, was also at the meeting. He told council that it was not necessary to demolish the work. Rather, it could be underpinned to have it rest solidly on bedrock.
With Corbett hinting at a lawsuit the next day, Fergus councillors met that evening and asked their solicitor for advice. The bridge committee of council had met earlier in the day, and they recommended that Ed Parsons be hired as bridge inspector at a salary of $60. The full council confirmed the appointment.
On the advice of their solicitor, councillors cancelled the masonry portion of Corbett’s contract on Oct. 20, paying him $230 for work done to date. The St. David Street bridge had been closed for most of October, and late in the month Ferguson announced that he was ready to close and demolish the old Tower Street bridge. Unbelievably, no one had seemed to consider that both bridges would be out of service at the same time. By then there was much grumbling about the impending double closure, which would impact not only local traffic but that moving to and from Guelph from Arthur and Mount Forest.
At a council session on Oct. 31, the 11th that month, council received a petition signed by more than a hundred ratepayers, objecting to the simultaneous closure of both bridges. Council asked Ferguson to postpone his work until the St. David Street bridge was complete. Ferguson balked, stating a delay would cost him money and disrupt other scheduled work. Eventually, on the payment of a further $36, he agreed to the hold up his work.
That night council approved a couple of other bridge-related costs: $83 for Portland cement used in the St. David Street piers, and $20 to engineer Tom Ingles for his inspections and reports.
On Nov. 5 council advertised for fresh tenders to complete the masonry work on the south pier. Contractors had only three days to prepare their bids, to be submitted to Parsons. Surprisingly, four came in, with John Monteith the lowest at $72. That did not include all the masonry work. A later contract for side and backing walls went to James Gow.
At their last meeting of 1879, council received a bill from John Taylor, the designer of the bridges and the dismissed inspector. He wanted $70; council offered $25.
Completion of the construction work on the bridges limped on into the spring of 1880. There were no more major confrontations or incidents. By then J.W. Green-Armytage was reeve, the third head of council to deal with the bridges.
In the history of Wellington County the Fergus bridge projects of 1878 to 1880 are probably the most complicated cases of bridge building, involving three engineers, a major lawsuit, political intrigue and duplicity, bungling, indecision, scamped construction work, and ineffective leadership.
It is hard to explain: those involved were not stupid men, and all seemed to have the best of motives. In the end, the basic problem is that the projects were guided by men who were single-minded, and completely incapable of working together effectively or for the larger good.
It is probable that the costs of the two bridges, when all the legal and engineering costs are considered, doubled due to all the controversy and reversed decisions.
In retrospect, several people realized that those funds could have paid for iron bridges rather than wooden ones. But by then, as the saying goes, it was all water under the bridge.
*This column was originally published in the Advertiser on Feb. 10, 2006.
