At 7 a.m., on a brisk morning in November, the ferry ride to the Toronto Islands bears little resemblance to the hurried clatter just a few months prior. Gone are the hordes of families and day-trippers, the lineups and, well, the the ferries themselves. At this time of year, just the Ongiara makes its lone voyage back and forth between the mainland. My co-passengers, the half dozen or so of them, are mostly members of the Toronto Parks department crossing over to prepare the area for winter.

My plan for the island is slightly more sinister though; I'm making the voyage in search of ghosts. Halloween may have passed, but a trip to the Lighthouse has been on my to-do list for some time. And while I'm approaching my trip with a heafty dose of journalistic skepticism, I should admit that — should I be successful — this won't be the first time I've seen one.

The Halton County Radial Railway is, for all intents and purposes, a streetcar museum. The patch of land about an hour northwest of Toronto is home to the most comprehensive collection of trolly coaches, suburban/inter urban cars, passenger and freight locomotives, and of course, streetcars. But it's also not really like any other museum around; for one, none of the collection is kept out of reach behind protective glass or on pedestals.

The museum is more like the life-size manifestation of a basement, model train set. The men (it's mostly men) who run the Halton Radial Railway Museum are just train nuts for whom models just weren't enough. So instead of a replicas, they've laid their own track, run their own wires, and built a real working railroad that, along with some examples from elsewhere, essentially displays the entire history of public transportation in Toronto.

Jungle Cat World is a small, independently owned zoo on the outskirts of the GTA. The operation began thirty years ago as a hobby, when co-founders Wolfram and Christa Klose adopted a baby lion cub. Since then, Jungle Cat World has evolved into a fully accredited and "renowned zoological park, known for its captive breeding program and environmental education programs, like Safari Zoo Camp."

Located north-east of Oshawa, my trip to Jungle Cat World began with the acquisition of an automobile. Theoretically, this place is reachable through GO Transit, but it looked like one giant headache, and the possibility of being stranded in a place where the streets have no name didn't have the romantic undertones one might expect.

Woodbine Racetrack is a massive monolith on the outskirts of northwest Toronto; a beacon, visible from miles around, calling to passers by with promises of easy money, cheap entertainment and greasy food. The surrounding area is a suburban Serengeti, speckled with the occasional young tree and just waiting for someone to plunk down a Home Depot Supercentre or a Costco (or both!).

When I was young, quite young actually, my Dad bought me a telescope. It couldn't have cost more than about $100 and was probably about as effective as holding a magnifying glass up to the sky, but regardless, warm summer evenings up at my grandparent's cottage were spent out on the deck with him, looking up, deciphering star charts and trying to make sense of the seemingly random light show overhead.

The night sky on the shores of Canal Lake, just outside Bolsover, is black — pitch black, save for the billions of tiny pinholes puncturing the sky. It's 100km away from anything that could even begin to be considered a major city and with no light pollution, and the calm of the lake laid out in front of you, it was the perfect site to stare upwards in awe.

When the big red double decker bus pulls up to the curb, painted with big yellow "City Sightseeing" lettering, I can't help but question what it is I'm doing.

After over a decade in this city, I feel pretty comfortable getting around. In that time I've lived on Queen West, Little Portugal, the Danforth, and in Bloordale. I've worked everywhere from Bay Street to Downsview and I've bicycled from the Etobicoke to Scarborough. But despite, or perhaps because of that familiarity, it's easy to let the form of the city fade into a list of tasks, deadlines and impending social engagements.