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There was major news for Montreal drivers on the front page of the Montreal Gazette on Oct. 28, 1960.

“Completion of the long-awaited cross-island Metropolitan Boulevard came another step closer to reality yesterday with the announcement that the expressway will be a link in the Trans-Canada Highway,” we reported.

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The federal government was to assume half the cost of the expressway, which was to stretch 53 kilometres from Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue in the west to the Bout de l’Île Bridge at the eastern end of Montreal island.

The funding would be a shot in the arm to the $125-million project, the story said. Construction had begun in 1957, but three years later, fewer than nine kilometres had been completed. There had been a major slowdown after many of the 32 municipalities on the island protested the costs levied on them for building the road.

The front-page news about the Metropolitan expressway was part of a larger announcement about the extension of the Trans-Canada Highway into Quebec. The agreement, signed by federal Public Works Minister David J. Walker and Quebec Roads Minister Bernard Pinard, would provide the country “with a truly Trans-Canada Highway spanning the nation from coast to coast,” we reported. Quebec was the last province to sign the agreement.

Construction on the Montreal expressway project, now known as Autoroute Métropolitaine, was finally completed in 1971.

This uncredited photograph shows the section of the Met at St-Laurent and Crémazie Blvds. under construction two years earlier, on Oct. 25, 1958.