Bathurst Street project preserves history

Dailycommercialnews.com
March 3, 2015
By Dan O’Reilly

More than just the standard engineering, construction and legal details have been involved in the reconstruction of a long closed 5.2-kilometre stretch of Bathurst Street near Bradford. Preserving Pre-European history was also a significant component.

York Region had to divide the Bathurst Street Reconnection, as it is officially known, into two phases when an archaeological assessment recovered artifacts appearing to be related to a small to medium-sized 14th century ancestral Huron-Wendat settlement.

The project encompasses the rebuilding of Bathurst from Green Lane in King Township north to Holland Landing Road in the neighbouring Town of East Gwillimbury, as well as some improvements to the Bathurst Street intersections at Holland Landing and Highway 11. SNC-Lavalin is the detailed design consultant.

In 1995 the region closed the road because of the poor conditions of the road and one of the bridges. The topography and the alignment were also factors that led to that decision, says Cynthia Martin, the Bathurst Street Reconnection project manager.

"There is considerable traffic growth in the area due to increases in population and employment forecasts in the Town of East Gwillimbury, Township of King, Town of Newmarket and Town of Bradford West Gwillimbury," says Martin, in explaining why the region examined the need to reopen and rebuild it.

In 2006 an environment assessment was conducted by Dillon Consulting and, in 2010, the assessment was approved by the Ministry of Environment.

In 2011, however, an archeological assessment by Toronto-based Archeological Services Inc. (ASI) uncovered the Huron settlement artifacts near the south end of the designated construction route.

More intensive assessments followed and during a four-month period in 2013 a major excavation of the site was conducted by ASI. Some of the key findings included two middens (garbage dumps) and the remnants of a longhouse measuring 51 metres (167 feet) long and 6.5 metres (21 feet) wide.

"They (ASI) used drinking straws to indicate where it once stood."

In total, more than 11,425 artifacts were uncovered and removed and are now in the care of Archeological Services. First Nations were kept informed of the excavation throughout the process, says Martin.

Originally, the Bathurst Street Reconnection was intended to be one contiguous undertaking. But the archeological find and the subsequent excavation forced the region "to do a rethink", with the ultimate decision to proceed with construction of the most northerly 2.2-kilometre section at the same the excavation to the south was being carried out.

Work on the north segment - basically from Holland Landing Road to 1.8 kilometres south of Highway 11 and including the Highway 11 intersection improvements, started in 2013 and is scheduled for completion this summer. KAPP Contracting Limited is the general contractor.

Meanwhile the region has issued a tender for the south segment after receiving clearance from the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport, the ministry which enforces a section of the Ontario Heritage Act dealing with the conservation of archaeological resources.

Still, even though the archeological excavation is deemed complete, a senior archeologist from ASL will monitor the grading to mitigate the potential of disturbing an ossuary site within 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) of the village site, says Martin.

Construction will start later this year and by the fall of 2016 the Bathurst Street Reconnection will have been completed, she says.

"The Bathurst Street road improvements project will eliminate the missing link in York Region's northern road system."