CVL Engineers

On May 29, 1939, Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge had its official opening during the first royal visit by a reigning monarch to Canada, with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth presiding over the ceremony.

The bridge had already opened to traffic on November 14, 1938, but the 1939 royal event made it a public “arrival moment” for a new piece of infrastructure linking Vancouver to the North Shore across the First Narrows of Burrard Inlet.

Today, the Lions Gate Bridge is still one of the region’s most visible transportation links, and its opening week is a useful reminder that major civil projects often have two milestones: the day traffic starts moving, and the day the public story is formally stamped into history.


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A team of engineering students from the University of Toronto has set a new load-bearing record at the 2026 Troitsky Bridge Building Competition.

The team’s basswood bridge carried nearly 4,900 kilograms during testing, surpassing the previous ultimate load record at the competition. The event challenges students to design and construct lightweight bridges capable of supporting maximum loads, combining structural efficiency with material optimization.

Competitions like Troitsky provide students with hands-on experience in structural design, fabrication, and testing, while reinforcing concepts related to load distribution, stability, and failure modes.

Read more: https://bit.ly/4t0dXP6


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