TORONTO’s Belt Line Railway encircled a much smaller city when it opened to passenger traffic in 1892. Its purpose: to transport people and freight between the new suburbs – Forest Hill, Rosedale, Moore Park and Chaplin Estates – and the city’s downtown core.
Unfortunately, the suburban real estate boom ended after only two years, and some of the railways’s inclines were too steep for freight trains. Thus, the rails were torn up and shipped to France during the Great War of 1914-18.
The City of TORONTO bought the roadbed from CN Rail in 1990, and Councillor Kay Gardner became a driving force to convert the land into a 4.5 kilometre long park and hiking trail from Mount Pleasant Cemetery and the Davisville subway train yards, westward through some of the city’s poshest neighbourhoods.