After a period of political instability during which Canada had four prime ministers in five years, Wilfrid Laurier, the Member of Parliament for the federal riding of Quebec East, was elected on a Liberal platform in 1896 and led the push to build the Quebec Bridge until he left office in 1911.

A March 1897 article in the Quebec Morning Chronicle noted: The bridge question has again been revived after many years of slumber, and business men in Quebec seem hopeful that something will come of it, though the placing of a subsidy on the statute book is but a small part of the work to be accomplished, as some of its enthusiastic promoters will, ere long, discover.

Both Federal and Provincial Governments seem disposed to contribute towards the cost, and the City of Quebec will also be expected to do its share.

The Quebec Bridge was included in the National Transcontinental Railway project, undertaken by the federal government.

[5] In 1903, the bond issue was increased to $6,000,000 and power to grant preference shares was authorised, along with a name change to the Quebec Bridge and Railway Company (QBRC).

[11] Schreiber subsequently requested the support of another qualified bridge engineer, but was effectively overruled by the Cabinet on August 15, 1903.

However, preliminary calculations made early in the planning stages were never properly checked when the design was completed.

All went well until the bridge was nearing completion in the summer of 1907, when the QBRC site engineering team under Norman McLure began noticing increasing distortions of key structural members already in place.

[citation needed] McLure became increasingly concerned and wrote repeatedly to QBRC consulting engineer Theodore Cooper, who at first replied that the problems were minor.

The Phoenix Bridge Company officials claimed that the beams must already have been bent before they were installed, but by August 27 it had become clear to McLure that this was wrong.

Near quitting time on the afternoon of August 29, after four years of construction, the south arm and part of the central section of the bridge collapsed into the St. Lawrence River in 15 seconds.

The Royal Commission, which was granted by Edward VII by advice of his Governor General, Albert Grey, on August 31, 1907, consisted of three members, who were all engineers of good standing: Henry Holgate, of Montreal,[16] JGG Kerry, of Campbellford, Ontario, also an instructor at McGill University, and Professor John Galbraith, then dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto.

The Commissioners presented their Report in full on February 20, 1908, issued 15 conclusions, and included the hindsight work of consulting bridge engineer C.C.

The abortive construction of the Quebec Bridge spanned the careers of two Ministers of Railways and Canals, and one temporary replacement, who was on the job for five months immediately preceding the disaster.

[22] Re-construction began almost immediately after the accident, and the government granted special permission for the bridge builders to acquire the needed steel.

Armed soldiers, and later Dominion Police, guarded the structure and checked passes until the end of the War.

In 1970, the Pierre Laporte Suspension Bridge opened just upstream to accommodate freeway traffic on Autoroute 73.

Despite its private ownership, CN received federal and provincial funding to undertake repairs and maintenance on the structure.

On August 29, 2006, a year-long commemoration was begun in the Kahnawake Reserve for the lives of the 33 Mohawk men who died in 1907.

Since its transfer to CN Rail by the federal government in 1993, maintenance and restoration programs for this historic infrastructure have been cut back.

CN Rail has deemed the proposed sanding and restorative paint work to be "aesthetic" and therefore unnecessary, a categorization supported by a ruling of the Superior Court of Quebec.The corrosion, accelerated by exposure to extremes of weather, will ultimately result in the loss of the bridge's mechanical properties—and potentially, its structural integrity as well.

The mayor of Quebec City, Regis Labeaume, accused the federal government of breaching a promise made during the 2015 electoral campaign to act upon the maintenance of the bridge [30] On May 10, 2024, the Canadian Government and CN announced an agreement for the sale of the bridge for the symbolic sum of $1.