TORONTO -- On a wintry evening, the Prince Edward Viaduct can seem a desolate place despite six lanes of roaring road traffic and subways that rumble along the underside of the massive bridge on Toronto's East Side.

Drivers jockey for position on the nearby Don Valley Parkway, most of them unaware they have passed under a bridge considered North America's second most popular suicide spot.

Over its 84 years, the bridge has stood as the city has blossomed from a provincial trading hub to become Canada's financial and cultural center. During that time, the Prince Edward Viaduct has also watched as some 480 desperate souls have ended their lives by throwing themselves off the bridge.

But the viaduct is being fitted with a shimmering barrier of rods and girders that designers hope will deter would-be jumpers from adding to the death toll.

With a reported 17 suicides per year, the bridge attracts more jumpers than Niagara Falls and trails only the Golden Gate Bridge, which averages 20 suicides a year, as North America's second most popular public suicide site, according to a 1997 report by David Gunnell of the University of Bristol, England.

"So many souls spent the last moment of their lives at that location," said Al Birney, who has led the campaign for the construction of the barrier. "To the families of the mentally ill, it represented an awful lot of sorrow and heartache and worry and death." Battling Obstacles A volunteer with the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario, Birney waded through five years of municipal red tape, wrote letters and endured numerous city council debates to get construction started in June on the so-called "luminous veil."

Fashioned from over 10,000 steel rods fastened to two rows of steel support beams, the design aims to give an unobstructed view of the valley while also making suicide jumps impossible. Construction is due to end later this month.

Workers assembling the structure have had plenty of reminders of the veil's grim purpose, as several people have jumped from the bridge during construction.

While there is no security force assigned specifically to the structure, police patrol the bridge regularly. In addition, pay phones have been installed on each side of the street at both ends of the bridge, alongside a sign with a number for a 24-hour suicide hotline.

But critics have argued that inconvenienced jumpers will simply find another bridge, such as the nearby Leaside Viaduct, which also spans the Don Valley.

A recent letter to the editor of the Toronto Star newspaper suggested the barrier would only be effective if similar barriers were erected on every other major bridge in the city.

But supporters of the barrier say the viaduct is more than just another bridge, and its prominent location and grim history has given it a perverse kind of cachet.

Built during World War One and named in commemoration of the Prince of Wales' 1919 visit to Toronto, the construction of the bridge was seen as a crucial step in the coming-of-age of a nascent metropolis. "These places, these magnets tend to attract people who are looking for kind of a romanticized way to kill themselves," said Michael McCamus, a former journalism student who has been Birney's right-hand man in the campaign. (Reuters)