06/17/2026
Rough road ahead - building the TCH.
Travel was a lot different decades ago before the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH) was completed in 1965. For many years, people relied on boats, the railway and local roads to get around. Building the TCH connected the island from east to west by car, truck and bus but it took incredible effort to make it happen.
Building the Trans-Canada Highway required the excavation of millions of tons of rock, bog and earth - 20 million tons of rock, 10 million tons of bog, and 50 million tons of earth.
12,500 men worked on the highway putting 17 million tons of gravel and crushed stone into place, and one-and-a-half million tons of asphalt.
69 bridges and 19 overpasses were built over fast flowing rivers and heavily travelled areas.
73,700 cubic yards of concrete and 3,700 tons of steel were used in constructing bridges and overpasses.
Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson officially opened the Trans-Canada Highway in Newfoundland on July 12, 1966. He unveiled a sixty foot shaft of Gambo granite at a site approximately mid-way in the Highway on a hill west of Grand Falls. The hill was renamed Pearson's Peak in honour of the occasion.
The ceremonies to mark the official opening of the Highway began the previous day with the departure from St. John's of a two-mile long motorcade headed by Premier Joey Smallwood. Following the Premier's sedan were five colourful floats depicting the Beothuks, the Province's first explorers, a truck carrying the Land Rover in which Smallwood first crossed the Province in 1958, another carrying a model of the first steam engine used in Newfoundland, and the final float which featured eleven full-sized statues of the men most responsible for the building of the Trans-Canada Highway.
The cavalcade stopped in Whitbourne, Clarenville, Port Blandford, Glovertown, Gambo, Gander and Grand Falls to hear the Premier speak.
“Building the Trans-Canada Highway has been a great and glorious thing for Newfoundland; staggering in its implications; indescribable in its effect upon the economy and upon the living, of our Newfoundland people, now and for the future," said Premier Smallwood. "We Newfoundlanders feel half an inch taller today."
According to TransCanadaHighway.com, "The Route 1 highway cost $92 million in federal spending and $28 million in provincial spending. It ran 903-kilometres northeasterly from Port aux Basques to Corner Brook before heading east through Grand Falls-Windsor to Gander and then southeast to St. John’s. Newfoundland had the second-longest distance to cover, after Ontario, and it also had the most difficult terrain, after only British Columbia.
There are stories though, that several sections were not paved until 1970, and that several of the bridges first built were not structurally strong enough for trucks carrying circus elephants (so the circus cancelled a performance in St John’s) and needed additional work."
Sources: Highway to Progress, https://dai.mun.ca/PDFs/cns/HighwaytoProgressThestoryoftheTransCanadaHighwayinNewfoundland.pdf; TransCanadaHighway.com
Photo 1: This photo was part of the presentation during the first 75th Anniversary Concert in May featuring QuickDraw and special guests. Two more concerts are planned for the fall. https://clarenville.ca/75th/events/
Photos 2-7 are from Highway to Progress
Photo 2: TCH near Clarenville
Photo 3: Construction of the TCH; a truck like this one crashed into the water near Clarenville. You can still see the wreck near Naked Man Rock.
Photo 4: Premier Smallwood led a cavalcade across the province to celebrate the opening of the TCH.
Photo 5: The cavalcade made several stops including Clarenville.
Photo 6: Cover of Highway to Progress showing Premier Smallwood at the wheel.
