City
Rediscovering Toronto's Monorail
Many people might not realize that Toronto once had a monorail. It wasn't where you'd expect it - at the airport, on the islands or zipping around the Metro Convention Centre. Instead, it was east of the city and part of the Toronto Zoo. It was called the Canadian Domain Ride and opened in 1976 to shuttle visitors to remote areas of the zoo where they could see animals that weren't confined to the typical entrapments.
After an accident in 1994 that injured 30 people the Zoo decided to shut the monorail down. It was the second incident in 3 years and the powers-that-be decided that enough was enough and replaced it with the Zoomobile.
While the electrical supply rails powering the monorail were later removed, many structural elements of the tracks remain and have largely been grown over by trees, shrubs and other vegetation.
Pete Forde, reading about the monorail on Torontoist back in 2007 was intrigued and recently set out to document his experience of discovering a part of Toronto's recent, but largely forgotten history. The result is 40 Days on the Monorail, his photographic art project that includes photos of what he found as well as a pretty neat video. Here's a closer look.
The video:
And here are the photos. View the Flickr Slideshow below. Or check it out fullscreen here.
All photos by Leftist on Flickr
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Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Your set is incredible, and you know how much I love that video! I'm glad it got shared with the world :)
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I had remembered riding that monorail when I was kid 30 years ago, and couldn't figure out where it had disappeared to when I returned in 1998.
I spent the better part of the morning searching for it, and was kind of pleased and ecstatic when I discovered that it still existed, sort of.
after you got permission were there any conversations to open up parts of it for "green eco" walks; it just seems that here is something that resonates with people and a chance to make something new; a promeade...
N.
No, eco walks didn't come up. :)
Its one thing we thought most people knew about. Anyone who went to a Toronto public school knew about the monorail.
Those were the days when education consisted of regular trips out.
these days most teachers are afraid for their life, too may rules and regulations for a simple day out and cheapness by the education boards. Kids are lucky if they get one field trip a year i hear.
Kids still get plenty of field trips these days. There may not have been anything special about the monorail at the time, but 17 years after it closed (and rightly so, given the record of accidents) it's now an interesting relic of another time and way of thinking, but it's also not surprising that some people either have never heard about it or have completely forgotten.