The Dean Lake Bridge Decision and the Absence of Accountability in Huron Shores

The Dean Lake Bridge, now closed after more than a century of service to visitors and communities across the northern shoreline of Lake Huron, is more than steel and rivets. Built in 1908 by the Algoma Steel Company, it is one of Ontario’s oldest surviving Pratt through-truss bridges, a historic landmark and a gateway to Mississagi Delta Provincial Park. It supports tourism, property values and local businesses. And it is (or was) the safest and most reliable access for residents and visitors.

The Dean Lake Bridge is currently closed.

(Supplied)

Abandoning it is not just a step backward; it is a leap away from the principles of community, leadership and stewardship. 

For years, engineering reports flagged the need for maintenance and repairs to the bridge, a primary access point for more than 200 residents and countless visitors.

Those warnings were ignored, and, predictably, the structure deteriorated. In January, an engineer ordered the bridge closed based on file review alone—no updated inspection. After further inspection was eventually done, it reopened in March under reduced load limits. From there, further study (already in progress) would determine the feasibility of bridge rehabilitation versus a new bridge.

Council’s failure to act on repeated engineering recommendations is not an oversight, it is complicity.

And now, by voting to demolish the bridge, Council seeks to bury that truth rather than confront it. Council seeks to frame this as diligence and prudence, the very things Council failed to ensure in the first place.

As it turns out, the engineering study both supports and recommends bridge rehabilitation over bridge replacement. But this was not known until July—and before then, another problem had already presented itself, one that should have been resolved if not for the bureaucratic inertia that followed.

In April, disaster struck—not with the bridge, but with the road leading to it, where a large-diameter culvert failed. With the failure cutting off access, the bridge was closed once again. Council denied responsibility for the failed culvert, citing missing paperwork as the reason for the denial. It referred the matter to legal counsel. Four months passed before a legal opinion was received by Council. That opinion to find out who owned responsibility for the culvert, came back with a short response: “Not it,” meaning the culvert was not the municipality’s issue, it was the provincial government’s mess to clean up.

The Community Voices Committee (CVC), which formed in response to the initial closure in January, started reframing our questions to focus on what seemed to be missing from Council’s information, namely truth and accountability.

Residents across Huron Shores are advocating to keep the Dean Lake Bridge open.

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Under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA), the CVC requested the legal opinion and the assumed-to-be-public records that opinion was based on. Council denied this request, citing privilege and nothing else. The CVC appealed this denial to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, and then we initiated our own records search.

The focus? To determine whether another party owned the culvert, namely the Ministry of Transportation (MTO), as claimed by the Municipality.

After only one month of searching the public records, the CVC was able to confirm that MTO does NOT own the culvert.

We provided this information to Council in early November. Shortly after—just before the November 12 Council meeting in fact—Council produced a document confirming its ownership of the failed culvert.

But this truth is rendered moot based on Council’s subsequent vote to abandon the bridge altogether.

Or is it?

Since the bridge closure in April, residents have endured dangerous detours, delayed emergency response times, and escalating costs. Chevis Road—the only alternate route— is substandard by the municipality’s own engineering assessments. It is too narrow, winding, intolerably steep in some sections, and vulnerable to flooding in others.

Winter is approaching, and residents will once again be forced to navigate icy hills, narrow passages, poor sightlines, and dangerous wash board conditions. Last winter, school buses struggled to manage these conditions, and seniors feared medical help wouldn’t arrive in time (it almost didn’t in a couple of cases).

So, these are not hypothetical risks—they are lived realities.

Council’s vote to abandon the bridge means this detour will become the primary access, with promised road upgrades and potential extensions.

Here’s the problem: the feasibility and the cost estimates of said upgrades and potential extensions are preliminary at best. The engineering assessment and Council’s own words identify that the environmental limitations are unknown, the land ownership constraints are unresolved, and the subgrade conditions across the area(s) to be upgraded-extended have not yet been investigated. What does this mean? It means that detailed design and subsequent construction WILL take two years or more, and that’s assuming construction is even possible given the limitations and constraints identified.

It also means spending millions more than the current cost estimates reflect – and potentially more than the cost of bridge rehabilitation.

And here’s the rub: Council also voted NOT to restore interim access to the bridge for the next two years while it sorts out design and construction of the alternate road-route.

So, the vote to demolish the bridge in favour of this alternative also abandons people, not just infrastructure.

Council’s decision was not rooted in community values or safety. It was a decision that, in the making, reduced the daily lives of residents dependant on the bridge to a financial equation.

To be clear, the rational for Council’s decision was financial alone, citing that investing in the road was better than spending money on a bridge that would eventually be removed. However, it is not clear how Council could be so certain of this. Its deliberation at the November 12 Council Meeting certainly didn’t shed any light on that, nor could this be understood from the underlying engineering reports Council was to be relying on to inform the discussion.

But what makes the decision and supporting rationale even more troubling is what was left unsaid. Council’s deliberations did not include any discussion about the people impacted. No acknowledgment of the safety risks, the isolation, or the daily hardships residents have endured for nine months and would be made to endure for a minimum of two more years.

And more troubling still, in all the talk about fiscal responsibility, there was no mention of the liability Chevis Road most certainly presents in its current state – one that won’t change for the next two years. Nor was there any mention about Council’s June 2025 application for provincial funding to restore interim access to the bridge, funding that

could cover culvert replacement and interim bridge repairs, and that would see the residents protected and perhaps the road liability minimized during the two years (or more) needed for design and construction of the road upgrades-extensions. The rationale for this vote of non-protection? It would be throwing good money after bad.

Not-for-nothing, but the CVC is asking why this application for funding was not discussed or included in the motions before Council? And we are also asking where is the wisdom in potentially sending money back to the province at a time when every municipality is clamoring for it?

The decision to abandon the bridge entirely and also deny residents a safe transition period to the single-access road-route reduced lives to a calculation, but one where those lives simply didn’t factor into it. Period.

Since the initial bridge closure right on through to today, the CVC has worked tirelessly to advocate for the safety of residents and the accountability of leadership.

We organized surveys and shared the results to Council. We reviewed engineering reports, prepared detailed submissions and proposed thoughtful and practical solutions, such as the formation of an ad-hoc committee that would ensure a comprehensive evaluation of all options. We even announced plans to form a not-for-profit coalition to raise money and assist Council in securing provincial support to save the Dean Lake Bridge.

Our efforts have been consistent, transparent, and accountable. And our commitment to assist with financial support and advocacy is bankable. Yet instead of leveraging this work and partnership, Council has turned away.

The Dean Lake area residents, and our entire municipality, deserve better. We have done our part. Its time for Council to do the same.

Leadership means more than balancing budgets. It means protecting people, preserving heritage, and planning for prosperity. Leadership was absent from the November 12th vote.

But it is never too late to show the courage to own past failures and correct course.

Council can and should restore interim access to the bridge for the next 2 years, thereby setting a reasonable clock to confirm that the alternate road-route is doable and/or affordable, and protecting those most impacted by this evaluation.

The money is not wasted where it affords these residents safe and reliable access, until such time as the same can be said for the alternative (if applicable). Safety and well being are not luxuries, they are the standard every person is entitled to.

So, once again, the CVC is calling on Council to remember that our community deserves better than the silence that comes from empty words and the willful blindness of a Council looking for a way out rather than a way through. Denial dressed as diligence cannot be excused.

In every community, there is work to be done. In Huron Shores, that work begins with reversing the trend of abandonment of the Dean Lake Bridge, and more importantly, the residents who depend on it.

The Community Voices Committee (CVC) is a group of concerned citizen advocates in the Municipality of Huron Shores.