The Confederation Bridge joins the eastern Canadian provinces of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, making travel throughout the Maritimes easy and convenient. The curved, 12.9 kilometre (8 mile) long bridge is the longest in the world crossing ice-covered water, and a decade after its construction, it endures as one of Canada?s top engineering achievements of the 20th century.

The decision to replace the existing ferry service with a fixed link followed a heated debate throughout the 1980?s. Farmers, fishermen, tourism operators and residents of Prince Edward Island had sharply contrasting opinions about how year-round access to the mainland would affect their way of life and livelihood. Eventually, it was decided that the debate would be settled at the polls. The federal department of Public Works and Government Services selected its favourite bridge design out of several proposals from the private sector, and on January 18, 1988, Premier Joseph Ghiz asked Prince Edward Islanders to make the final decision in a plebiscite. At the polls, 59.4 per cent of Islanders voted Yes to a fixed link.

After four years of construction using crews of more than five thousand local workers, the Confederation Bridge opened to traffic in the spring of 1997, at a total construction cost of one billion dollars.

The bridge is a two-lane highway toll bridge that carries the Trans-Canada Highway between Borden-Carleton, Prince Edward Island (at Route 1) and Cape Jourimain, New Brunswick (at Route 16). It is a multi-span post-tensioned concrete box girder structure. Most of the curved bridge is 40 metres (131 ft) above water, and it contains a 60 m (197 ft) high navigation span to permit ship traffic. The bridge rests on 62 piers, of which the 44 main piers are 250 m (820 ft) apart. The bridge is 11 m (36 ft) wide. The speed limit on the bridge is 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph). It takes about 10 minutes to cross the bridge.