When a newsroom debate became a bridge too far, we asked for a second opinion.
According to the vast majority of you, our eastern-most bridge on the North Shore is called the Second Narrows bridge.
In a recent poll, nearly 70 per cent (local and total) of respondents voted for that option. That's compared to around one-fifth who said they call it the Ironworkers, and less than one-tenth who call it the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, which is the span's official name.
To muddy the waters even further, B.C.'s Ministry of Transportation often refers to it as the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge. But the department clarified that's just for the sake of brevity.
So what is the gap preventing a clear nomenclature?
The answer is a bridge to the past.
While the bridge was under construction in June 1958, two spans of the bridge suddenly collapsed, killing 19 people and seriously injuring another 20.
The Second Narrows Bridge officially opened two years later in August of 1960. It wasn't until 1994 that the bridge's name was formally changed to Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, to honour those who lost their lives.
Today, most people who live in the Lower Mainland will use Ironworkers and Second Narrows interchangeably. Though, it seems that the latter has more sticking power. Part of the explanation is history, the other is geography.
Simply put, it's the second narrows of Burrard Inlet, said a spokesperson from the Ministry of Transportation.
"The first narrows is where the inlet narrows the first time, which is Lions Gate, and the second closest touch of land is where the Ironworkers spans," the spokesperson said.
Perplexingly, almost no one calls the other bridge the First Narrows, even though that's still an official name for that span.
So why does any one name stick? Maybe it just sounds better.
The North Shore News polled 1,951 North Shore News readers and asked the question: What do you call the Highway 1 bridge that connects the North Shore to Vancouver?
The poll ran April 4 to 18, 2023. Of the 1,951 votes, we can determine that 681 are from within the community. The full results are as follows:
Results are based on an online study of adult North Shore News readers that are located in North Shore. The margin of error - which measures sample variability - is +/- 2.21%, 19 times out of 20.
North Shore News uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.
