Miramichi braces for bridge shutdown, again, with no bypass in the works
CBC
It's January and that means residents of Miramichi are experiencing a now-annual round of anxious speculation: will the Centennial Bridge close completely this year?
And if it does, will there be any way to avoid the traffic apocalypse that seems certain to follow?
"Every time we get to this time of year, we hear about the bridge closure potentially happening," Coun. Ryan Somers said.
"I heard that last year. And I heard that the year before. I always look at it as 'the dreaded bridge closure,' and we are seemingly relieved when it gets pushed back another year. But the reality is that it needs to be done."
The 1.1-kilometre span across the Miramichi River, completed in 1967, is a key artery not just for the city, but for all traffic moving between northeast New Brunswick and the southern part of the province.
About 13,700 vehicles used it daily in 2023, according the province.
Closing it to upgrade the driving surface — part of an overhaul announced in 2015 that was supposed to be finished last year — will push all that traffic onto city streets.
The King George Highway, where most of it will go, is often congested already.
"All of the local services, fire, ambulance, school bus, mail, anything you can think of will be frozen solid," David Cadogan, a retired newspaper editor, said.
"Not only that, nothing will be able to get through here from the north shore."
Business owner Les Price said the shutdown, expected to start in May and continue until fall in each of the next three years, will undo decades of effort to turn around Miramichi's economic decline.
"If we shut down the traffic, gridlock our traffic, everything we've built over the last 25 years is gone," he said.
"You cannot close that bridge without an alternate route on the north side."
Price and Cadogan are now pushing for a last-minute, ad-hoc, Hail-Mary-pass bid to get that alternate route built — fast.
People continue to flock to Banff National Park.
Two Toronto councillors have brought forward a motion to ban raising foreign flags at Toronto City Hall and civic centres.
Thousands of Maritime Electric customers in multiple communities across Queens County are without power Saturday morning.
Three weeks into the conflict in the Middle East, the joint U.S.-Israel onslaught has killed much of Iran's leadership, knocked out much of its ballistic missile capability, sunk nearly all of its navy and, according to U.S. President Donald Trump, has "militarily WON" the war already.
Sometimes to understand the weather, you have to fly straight into it.
When he was a student at what was then known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Andrew Scott had a professor who regularly said that painting was something that could be done until someone dropped dead, while rock n' roll had a best-before date.
Almost a year after a Miramichi woman spoke out about how dealing with an insurance-related company left her in financial ruin, a watchdog commission in the province is formally warning people to stay away.
Getting a job is not the same as it used to be, a young job seeker told CBC Toronto at an employment fair in Oakwood Village earlier this week.
A teenage girl is dead after she was struck by at least one vehicle Friday night in Vaudreuil-Dorion — a suburb located about 45 kilometres west of Montreal.
There was a time when Manitobans used to consider Saskatchewan a rural, underdeveloped backwater.
The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS) found some reasons to celebrate the 2026-27 provincial budget, but it takes issue with the amount designated for the province's Water Security Agency (WSA).
The family of an Edmonton woman who died in Honolulu last year is pushing for Hawaiian authorities to re-open the case.
It was around this time in 2020 that everything changed.