News and Events

The Niagara Escarpment is Southern Ontario’s most prominent landform. It consists of a hard ‘cap rock’of Silurian-aged limestones deposited in a tropical sea some 450 million years ago, when what is nowOntario straddled the equator and shallow warm seas flooded the interior of North America. On severaloccasions in the last 2 million years the Escarpment was sculpted by 2 km-thick glaciers which carveddeep valleys into its face and left glacial landforms such as drumlins and moraines when the glaciers lastleft the area about 13,000 years ago. Deep freezing of softer rocks during ice ages caused the cap rockto bend (a process called ‘cambering’) allowing large blocks to move downslope opening up deep‘fissure-caves’ along the crest of the Escarpment. Paleo-Indians found and mined hard ‘tool stones’ atthe base of the Escarpment close by some 11,500 years ago. Come and enjoy a rock walk with Nick Eyles of the University of Toronto, learn the secrets of the NiagaraEscarpment and its rocks over the past 500 million years and their wider global geologic significance.   This event is a partnership between the Georgian Bay Geopark and the Escarpment Corridor Alliance.    

Geology of the Georgian Bay Aspiring Global Geopark and Educational tools for Teachers and the Public: Midland, July 4th 2023 We are hosting a half day UNESCO Aspiring Geopark workshop on the geology of Georgian Bay being held on July 4th at the Midland Cultural Centre in Midland 9am-12 noon, Tuesday July 4th. Attendance is free. Sign up here.   Georgian Bay Geopark is a not-for-profit organisation and support for this workshop was generously provided by EdGeo the Canadian Earth Science Teacher Workshop Program.   The workshop will consist of lectures on the geology of Georgian Bay and a review of high educational resources developed by the Geopark for teachers and the public.   The overall purpose of the workshop is to ultimately generate local guardians of more than 140 geosites identified around Georgian Bay by providing knowledge tools and access to resources to area residents. The Geopark and U of T have developed online teaching modules, virtual field trips and other online resources for educators and the public and these will be presented at the workshop. Provisional workshop speakers Professor Nick Eyles, University of Toronto at Scarborough (UTSC) The geological evolution of North America and Georgian Bay: the case for a UNESCO Geopark Dr. Kirsten Kennedy, Mitacs Post doctoral Fellow in Geoscience (UTSC) and Syed Bukhari (Ph.D student) Educational Resource kits and LiDAR mapping of geology sites around Georgian Bay Please sign up here by June 24th if you are interested; we have space for about 35 participants.  Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email

‘TWO-EYED SEEING’; USING LIDAR TO DOCUMENT AND ILLUSTRATE 11,000 YEARS OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY IN GEORGIAN BAY – First ever Geocultural Atlas of Georgian Bay – Kirsten Kennedy , Dr Nick Eyles (University of Toronto) – with Jamie Hunter, Jack Contin and Peter Storck Building on their individual legacies, and a shared history of excellence in storytelling, exploration and education, The National Geographic Society and The Royal Canadian Geographical Society have reinvigorated their long-standing collaborative efforts to create this initiative. The Trebek Initiative funds storytellers, educators, conservationists and researchers whose projects aim to preserve Canadian and Indigenous land, wildlife, water, culture and history. Georgian Bay, Ontario is a unique North American ecosystem now recognized as an Aspiring UNESCO Global Geopark in acknowledgement of its diverse geology and landscapes. By virtue of its position along the edge of the Canadian Shield, it has been at a crossroad of cultures since people first visited the shores of then Glacial Lake Algonquin, 11,500 years ago. Thus began a long-lived interconnection between an evolving landscape and First Ancestors that has persisted in the histories and traditions of the many Indigenous cultures that have called Aki and Georgian Bay home, like the Huron-Wendat, Council of Three Fires, Haudenosaunee, and most recently the Metis People. Embracing the principle of ‘two-eyed seeing’ to reconcile the Indigenous perspective from geomythology and history with state-of-the art mapping technologies, Kirsten will map geo-cultural sites identified by local Indigenous and archeological partners with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology. Work completed to date shows that LiDAR imagery reveals hitherto unseen details of a site’s physical setting in a highly visual and accessible format. The results will inform planning of the UNESCO Geopark and associated educational and conservation activities. As a final educational product, LiDAR images, geomythology, and maps will be curated into a large format physical and digital atlas of “geo-cultural” sites around Georgian Bay. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Facebook