Mrs. Moore's grade five class painted Covered Bridges, using watercolour and pastel,
as part of their study of Canada.
In 1900, Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario had an estimated
1000, 400 and five covered bridges respectively.
By the 1990's there were 98 in Quebec, 62 in New Brunswick and one in Ontario.
The Hartland Bridge (click on Hartland for pictures) is the longest covered bridge in the world. The West Montrose Covered Bridge is the last wooden covered bridge in Ontario. The Marchand Covered Bridge (click Marchand for more info) is the longest covered bridge in Quebec (click Quebec for pictures).
These paintings represent an imaginary historical covered wooden bridge
somewhere in Canada.
The students worked on illustrating a rocky river shoreline lined by trees, a stone wall, a gravel road, a painted wooden bridge with light reflecting off the bridge to create reflections of the bridge and the trees in the water.
Through researching the answer it appears that the main reason was to prevent the bridges from premature rotting. Covering and roofing them protects them from the weather, and so they last longer.
