401-403-410 Interchange, Mississauga, Ontario

Four stamps are being issued September 1, 1995, commemorating the World Road Congress to be held in Montreal, September 3 to 9. The stamps depict bridges in a variety of designs, built in various parts of Canada during different time periods. Bridges provide important routes of transport in Canada. CAPEX'96, the World Philatelic Exhibition taking place from June 8 to 16, 1996 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, will be featuring the theme of "transportation," and the CAPEX'96 logo appears in the selvage of the Bridges stamp pane. When T.B. McQuesten became Ontario's Minister of Highways in 1934, he integrated the scenic and the high-speed divided highway. The result was the Queen Elizabeth Way, opened in 1939, connecting Toronto and St. Catharines. The increased number of such highways presented engineers with numerous problems, with the foremost being switching tens of thousands of cars per day between different highways, minimizing collisions without slowing traffic. Solution: the interchange! Ontario's first four level interchange, one of the biggest and the best, is in Mississauga, just west of Toronto. This $80 million interchange joins highways 401, 403 and 410, providing easy passage between Metro Toronto, Brampton and Mississauga. Construction began in the mid-1970s and has continued since.