The George C. King Bridge (formerly known as the St. Patrick's Island Bridge and colloquially known as the Skipping Stone Bridge) is a pedestrian bridge that spans the

Bow River The Bow River is a river in Alberta, Canada. It begins within the Canadian Rocky Mountains and winds through the Alberta foothills onto the prairies, where it meets the Oldman River, the two then forming the South Saskatchewan River. These w ...

just northeast of Downtown Calgary,

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. The bridge connects the neighbourhoods of East Village to the south and Bridgeland to the north, with access from the bridge to St. Patrick's Island Park in the middle of the river. The bridge was built by the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) as part of the wider redevelopment of the East Village neighbourhood, in tandem with a $45 million redevelopment of St. Patrick's Island Park. Planning for the new bridge began in 2009, with construction getting underway in 2012. The bridge opened on October 20, 2014. The bridge is known locally as the Skipping Stone Bridge due to the form of the bridge, which looks like a stone skipping across the river.

2013 flood

During June 2013, Calgary and most of Southwestern Alberta were impacted by catastrophic floods. About 75 000 of Calgary's population of 1.2 million people at the time had to be evacuated from their homes as the rivers burst over their banks. The George C. King Bridge, being right over the Bow River and under construction at the time was partially supported on supports which were washed out by the river flow. The newly constructed bridge deck sagged and cracked. After the flood, it was decided that the entire bridge deck which had been completed to that time would have to be replaced, setting the project back by more than a year. However, 16 months later the bridge was opened to the public amid much fanfare, the first of the many bridges destroyed in the flood to be reconstructed.

References

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King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

Network arch bridges

2013 flood

See also

References