DSWAC in conjunction with Fleming College - Haliburton School of Art + Design, completed a week long course on teaching students how to build a dry stone bridge.
A small creek in a public park in the municipality Dysart Et Al was chosen and approved for the site where the permanent foot bridge was to be built.
Ten students worked together with me, their instructor, on this ambitious project.
After the foundations were dug and built up with stone (and the undergrowth was cut back) an 8 foot wooden former was set in place.
The first rows of voussoirs were laid over the thick springers.
18 tons of beautiful stone material was provided by Vince Hammond Aggregate near Minden Ontario
On the second day, the water in the creek rose unusually high, due to the sudden release of a month long heavy rainfall backup in a reservoir upstream.
The water upstream had to be slowed down with plywood over a culvert or the former might have been washed away.
On the third day the class went on a field trip to gather 4 more tons of voussoir-shaped stones from the quarry.
Tight fitting shims in combination with closely aligned arch stones are essential to create the even compression and necessary friction to hold all the stones in place when the form is taken out.
There is no lack of excitement watching the form come out and the arched bridge being born
Iris got the first underside barrel vault shot.
Work still goes on to complete the bridge on the last day
Including setting the parapet stones and the cobbled walking surface.
( Note the train and the jet in the background, an iconic triad of ways to cross land, air, and water. )
There's a job for everyone on a bridge.
We decided to call it the Canada Sesquicentennial Bridge.
Happy birthday Canada.
Well done students.
