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
Comments (17)
great piece. i remember riding this when i was a little girl. i still have pictures!! i wish they would bring it back.
The monorail is one Toronto treasure that I miss the most. It still saddens me that they completely scrapped it rather than revisit it with newer technology.
I remember riding it too, when I was a kid. I had completely forgotten about that until now...thanks for reminding me!
Does anyone have any images of what it looked like when in operation? I'm trying to remember whether or not I ever rode it.
Yay Pete! :)
Your set is incredible, and you know how much I love that video! I'm glad it got shared with the world :)
I live near the zoo and I can remember the monorail being the thing I looked forward to the most when I went there. I really miss it when I go to the zoo now :(
Great video.
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.
I had no idea the monorail had been shut down; that was such an integral part of the zoo! I guess it has been a while since Ive been out there.
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