QEW: Canada's First Superhighway

[snopes]

In his book QEW: Canada's First Superhighway, Robert Stamp recalls taking "the magic road to Toronto" with his parents "through the Niagara fruit orchards and vineyards, the gardens of Canada ... I watched the blue-and-orange 'ER' (for Elizabeth Regina) marker signs slip by. Four lanes of concrete pavement divided by a broad, grassy centre median that separated opposing streams of traffic. Easy on the eye; easy on the nerves."

Urban legend has it that American visitors thought "ER" was a tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt rather than the wife of King George VI (the QEW isn't named after the present monarch, but her mother).

http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/Ideas/article/240950