There was a disturbing revelation to be gleaned from the recent meeting between the Island leaders and officials from the Ministry of Transportation (MTO). Although the meeting between the MTO and representatives of Island municipalities and First Nations was held behind closed doors, discussion at the Manitoulin Municipal Association (MMA) table and follow-up communication with the MTO by The Expositor made it clear that the MTO has no long-term plans formulated in the case of a catastrophic failure of the swing bridge that is the Island’s only four season access.
The MTO is confident that, should the main mechanism on the bridge fail, they could close the bridge to ensure traffic can cross to and from the mainland. That confidence might be uncharitably characterized as “hopeism,” being as it does not take into account a failure that would prevent closing of the bridge or one that makes traversing the bridge unsafe even while closed.
When it comes to ensuring all contingencies are covered, hopeism simply doesn’t cut it.
There are, at minimum, 13,000 souls who depend upon the ability to transit the bridge year-round, and at least a doubling of that number during the summer season. Food, medical supplies and specialist appointments all depend on the ability to cross the swing bridge at Little Current to arrive in a timely manner.
A matter of a couple of days can be, not easily, but still can be dealt with through alternate means. But a long-term catastrophic closure of the bridge is another matter entirely.
It isn’t as though such failures never happen. Ask the folks in Latchford whose lives were disrupted by a failure of the bridge in their community several years ago. That failure was a huge disruption, but at least in that case there were alternate, albeit very inconvenient, routes for goods and services to travel. That is not the case on an island.
While ignorance may be bliss, it can also prove deadly.
Now that our leadership, municipal, First Nation, provincial and federal, have had the issue brought to their attention, there can be no legitimate excuse for not preparing contingencies for a catastrophic failure of the oldest structure on the provincial transportation system.
The Manitoulin swing bridge has not always been open to vehicular traffic, in fact, for the vast majority of the time that people have lived on the Island the swing bridge didn’t even exist. Built in 1913, the swing bridge only existed for rail traffic, prior to 1945 it wasn’t even open to cars and trucks. A small ferry operated alongside the bridge in order to bring vehicles across.
So, preparing plans to deal with a catastrophic failure should not be all that challenging.
Such an emergency plan would ensure that the disruption and danger to human life inherent in such a failure would be limited to the level of inconvenience. Further, the time involved in putting emergency solutions in place would be vastly reduced if everyone knew what to do and where to do it beforehand.
Preparing an emergency plan for such a failure is the prudent course of action. Certainly, there is little reason to believe the bridge, for all its geriatric provenance, is in any danger of such an occurrence. But complacency is not what is needed from our leadership at all levels. There are several possibilities that could lead to the swing bridge being out of action for a significant period of time—it behooves us to be prepared for that eventuality.
If such a plan is never needed, great. But should such a disaster come to pass, having contingency plans ready to be dusted off and acted upon would not only be a good thing, knowing such plans existed would go a long way toward calming public anxieties and maintaining public order.
The Canadian Constitution is based on the concept of providing peace, order and good government. Planning is the very essence of the latter.
