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Opening the Nipigon River Bridge, September 1937. Reduced revenues in the 1930s forced most Ontario municipalities to scale back their major projects. Still a minimum of road construction and road maintenance work continued through the decade. Here, the town crew works on a Goderich street in 1934.

Rural municipalities faced the same financial restrictions as the cities and towns, but road repair still went on. Here a horse-drawn grader works on the Brougham-Claremont Road in Ontario County. As the economy improved in the late 1930s, Ontario residents began buying cars and took to city streets and rural roads as never before. This 1937 photograph of a busy St. Paul Street in downtown St. Catharines was used to justify the need for the Queen Elizabeth Way as a by-pass around the city. Here, a Dufferin Construction company crew paves a section of the highway between Stoney Creek and St. Catharines in June 1940.