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