Blue Mountain is the local name used for the Niagara Escarpment where it overlooks Georgian Bay. The steep face of the Escarpment is created by the presence of strong resistant rocks that are much harder than those underneath, which form the low lying areas below (and much of the floor of Georgian Bay to the north). The soft rocks are of late Ordovician age (about 450 million years old) and dominated by shale which can be seen on the Georgian Bay coast nearby at Craigleith. The Escarpment rocks are dolostones (altered limestones) and are of Silurian age (440 to about 428 million). So next time you ski at Blue Mountain think about how when you're going downhill, you're also going backwards in time to an age when Ontario was covered by shallow warm seas.

Whale oil became prohibitively expensive in the mid-nineteenth century as demand outstripped supply. Subsequently, oil shale began to be used as a cheaper alternative for lighting and lubrication. This "rock oil" industry ultimately met with limited economic success but the 450 million year old Collingwood Shale has an important place in the early history of Ontario's oil industry.

The Scenic Caves at Collingwood are excellent examples of fissure caves. These occur in the narrow gaps that form between large blocks of rock as they move downslope. Fissure caves are also called "tectonic caves" because their formation depends on the presence of joints or deep cracks in the cap rock of the Niagara Escarpment. These are the product of stresses created by the slow drift of the North American plate westward over Earth's mantle .

Located on the southwest margin of Georgian Bay, Owen Sound is the largest community on the Bay and nestled within the narrow steep-sided valley of the Sydenham River that was carved by ice-age glaciers into the face of the Niagara Escarpment, and which continues offshore under the waters of Lake Huron. At one time, when the number of its churches rivalled that of its pubs its busy waterfront once enjoyed a reputation as ‘Chicago of the North’ benefitting from the arrival of the railway in Collingwood in 1855 and the beginning of the busy steamship route to Chicago. From 1950 to 1963 the SS Norgoma connected Owen Sound with Sault Ste Marie via Killarney, the North Channel and Manitoulin Island in the absence of any improved road that connected western and eastern Ontario until as late as 1960 with final upgrading and completion of Highway 17. Since then the demise of the fishing industry and the prominence of trucking devastated maritime trade. Owen Sound is now the regional hub of Grey County and is strategically located at the base of the Bruce Peninsula and the highway to Tobermory and the car ferry to Manitoulin which still provides a westernmost road route from southern to northern Ontario.