Tag: Art

Is science verifying indigenous stories? “No. The stories tell us that the science is heading in the right direction.” 

-Steven Blasco, Marine Geophysicist, Geological Survey of Canada.

Acknowledgments & Thanks:

• Erin Gundy for going above and beyond… and below the surface. 
• Arbello Creative (Anthony Perusello & Rebecca Arboly) for creative and financial support.
• The Deep Six “Collective”: Natalie and Kevin Kuipers (The Curse of the ProBono Topo?), Katrina Keeshig & Ryan Lauzon, Natasha Akiwenzie, Ray Auger. Thanks to Jason & Cindy McNamara for makerspace, etc.
• Thanks to Lenore Keeshig for everything she has done for deep water and deep truths.  

I’d like to acknowledge the Territory of the Anishinabek Nation: The People of the 3 Fires known as Ojibway, Odawa, and Potawatomie Nations. And further give thanks to the Chippewas of Saugeen and the Chippewas of Nawash, known collectively as the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, as the traditional keepers of this land.

“The SON People hold a special relationship with the Water and all beings that inhabit it. This relationship is rooted in cultural ways of knowing, understanding, and living in this world in a good way—a relationship that has existed since time beyond memory. SON regards the Water as a source of life and sustenance, both for the People and all of Creation. This sacred relationship makes it imperative for SON to uphold their duty to care for and protect the Water.” –Saugeen Ojibway Nation Environment Office website (accessed Mar. 29/25)

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Deep water and deep time: two subjects so wide nobody can see their farthest shores. The water in our eyes as we read these words and the humidity in the air we breathe as we read them flow from the umbilical chord of the lake next door. 

Let’s start on a firm footing: the bedrock that this building’s foundation floats no top of was watery when it began. Salt watery. In pre-dino days close to the equator, an inland sea shallowly lapped over coral reefs. These reefs carried a boatload of ancient life forms: brachiopods, crinoids, cephalopods and others. They intercepted the sloughed-off mud, minerals and more eroding from adjacent highlands and it got packed in.  

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Times changed; years passed. Once-watery reefs dried-up and became hard. They became the shell of the earth turtle as she moved at less-than-glacial speed northwards. Other reptilian relatives dined and dashed from the scene. Extinctions, comets and calamities each took their turn before they bowed out before the next scene change.

The dinosaurs never saw it coming, but The Ice did come. And go. And come. And go. For Ages. But geologists tell us that the frozen Laurentide ice sheet on the turtle’s frigid back finally began to melt—not for the last time, but for the most recent time—about 22,000 years ago. 14,000 years ago, around here, the turtle’s back was still covered with water but rising up. So was the saltwater on the coasts—the ice melt had raised sea levels about 375 feet /114 m higher!  

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Behind my home is a short portion of exposed Niagara Escarpment. Just below that and inside my property boundary, years ago I found a memento from the pre-dinosauric Silurian past: a moss-shrouded tabulate coral chunk as big as my head. Clearly this had been a watery place long ago and somewhere else on the earth’s surface! But within spitting distance below that location is a long, flat, level hummock of round-edged gravel. Just as clearly, here was a beach in the deep past. But when? 

I’d led students across a similar ancient beach many times on outings to Bruce’s Caves Conservation Area. But it wasn’t at the same elevation above sea level as the one behind my house. I knew that paleolimnologists study ancient lake levels, but I knew I wasn’t one nor did I know any. I’d read pieces of information talking about different ancient lake names, but most sources discussed confusingly vast areas such as “The Great Lakes Basin” with often cartoonishly vague maps. Their dates often are incomplete or conflict with other people’s writings or even their own! What was a landlubbing water seeker to do—what water events happened when and where?

I was on an Information Island. It was time to dive in, splash around and string together an educational survival raft from the resources within reach. Books, the internet, topographic maps, people and on-the-ground exploring would have to comprise something that’d float. 

Of the dates included in this construction, I’d take ANY of them with a grain of salt (but not with saltwater). Experts and sources often disagree 1-2,000 years for the same lake stage. The most accurate numbers may eventually prove to be 1,000 years different than what I state. But I’m striving to highlight basic lake level trends as best I can in the restricted area within which I live. And a note on terms: ya=Years Ago; ASL=Above Sea Level.

Lake Algonquin

21,000-11,600 years ago: the Saugeen Bruce Peninsula was cloaked under ice up to 2 km thick or covered with many meters of meltwater. Since then, the lake surface has resided at basically every land contour meter level from 300 meters above sea level (masl) to 70 m below today’s level. Each layer in this Deep Water, Deep Time work represents about 20 meters of elevation. But the focus is on four levels the waters rested at for long periods.

11,500-11,000 years ago: Main Glacial Lake Algonquin covers most of the Saugeen Bruce Peninsula. A raven circles Neyaashiinigmiing’s bluff-top islands. Swooping southwest, she watches waves hammering holes in cliffs. 1,800 raven generations later, I watch her descendants nest there inside Bruce’s Caves.

Lake Algonquin was 60 m higher than today, +/-240 m above sea level. The last glacier melted into an even bigger ancient glacial lake since named Agassiz. It fed Lake Algonquin which then drained over Orillia through to Toronto and/or North Bay to the Ottawa River subsequently. 

Lake Algonquin had a glacier at it’s northern edge. It covered the basins of modern Lake Huron and Georgian Bay and lasted for over 1,000 years. After it drained down a bit, a chain of islands appeared between Owen Sound and a much smaller Manitoulin Island. There was no Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula as we know it. 

Algonquin’s cold waves bashed the sharp edges off of the cobble beach stones that I often walk my dogs over behind my home. Speaking of homes, I can almost count on two hands the number of homes in the depicted area that would be on dry land if they existed back then. The heights above Hope Bay, the Neyaashiinigmiing bluff tops and the higher elevations in Purple Valley were southern islands in a cold lake with a wall of ice as its north shore. Main Lake Algonquin’s modern beach levels—240 m above sea level—were much lower when the ice was weighing it down. Everywhere around here was lower.  

There was another island you’ve hiked on if you’ve been to Skinner’s Bluff. I’ve taken many students to the north-facing lookout there. Resting there, you might hear me say, “Where now you can see those 3 islands down in the mouth of the bay, 11,000 years ago or so you’d see only two and they were at least 3 times smaller. You’d have gotten here by boat. Way off to the north, maybe you’d see a glacier above the water. Beautiful Neyaashiinigmiing was mostly underwater then. You wouldn’t see much land anywhere, including that line of light grey cliffs that stretches to your left which lead west to Wiarton. You’d see what would look like one low lying island less than half as wide as the modern bay in front of you is long. If any trees were up here, they were small conifers.”

Of course, there’s a long history of people enjoying these views. This huge watery region, dotted with a few grassy, scrubby islands was located one chilly day trip away from the dry mainland in modern Grey and Bruce Counties. A mammoth tooth was discovered nearby in Tara in 1979. And hey: “Where there’s meat, fish and wine, hungry folk can dine—for $11.99!” Ok, sorry—rather, since 11,999 years ago and maybe more. Did early Indigenous People look out upon such Lake Algonquin larder lands both before and after the most recent glacier?  

Lenore Keeshig in her talk titled “Geomythology: An Anishnaabe Perspective” on March 25th at Grey Roots Museum said, “We knew ice was coming down from the north. We visited there, we visited the ice, we put our hands on it. … Men would run long distances over the ice and snow. Oh-kwa-ming-i-win-wug translates as Ice People. …We have stories about mammoths and mastodons.” Keeshig relayed that her cousin found a projectile point used for very large game. 

For far too long, academics dismissed Indigenous stories like these. Thankfully, that tide has begun to turn. In 2004, Royal Ontario Museum’s Peter Storck published “Journey to the Ice Age: Discovering an Ancient World.” It is an interesting read and—via archeological discoveries in Grey-Bruce—corroborates indigenous perspectives about hunting caribou and other arctic mammals at the dawn of this era. Eventually, Lake Algonquin drained lower.

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Lake Stanley/Lake Hough Lowstand

10,500-9,500 years ago (Lake Stanley/Lake Hough Lowstand): 

Georgian Bay/Waussau-Gummauh has had incredible fluctuations from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. About 10,000 ya, the North Bay outlet became an open drainpipe for ye olde Lake Algonquin. 

Temperatures remained low, but climate became very dry. One concept I read about conjures almost desert-like precipitation patterns. Scrappy spruce trees and tough grasses tethered themselves to moister spots where there wasn’t continuous lake cover—and there rapidly was less and less lake cover! 

What now is thought of as Georgian Bay when described 10,000 years ago is called Lake Hough. It was NOT attached to any other lake—not modern Lake Michigan nor modern Lake Huron. It was about half of its modern surface area with far less than half of the modern water volume. In the Deep Water, Deep Time piece it is represented by the black “puddles” on the right/east side of the bay. 

For a time, Lake Huron (called “Lake Stanley” at 10,000 ya) poured over lengthy and deep portions of the Niagara Escarpment into Lake Hough. These waterfalls easily surpassed modern Niagara Falls for scenery: no big crowds, so no litter and no worries about finding a place to park! 

Eventually Lake Stanley kept it’s water to itself. At this time, Lake Superior wasn’t donating it’s water either. In fact, modern Lake Huron became three small, separate, shallow lakes that had no refreshing inflow from anything other than precipitation—and that wasn’t even enough to keep up with evaporation. Lake Hough got even smaller and with no refreshing reinforcements from became a bit saltier. It wasn’t as salty as Lake Ontario which was a bay of the Atlantic Ocean at that time, but it was nothing you’d want to to drink much of. 

Within way less than 2000 years, the lake levels changed in taste and in level about 220m/720 feet! Picture a raven gliding down from the top of Skinner’s Bluff to the edge of the modern lakeside. It would descend about 118m/387 feet. The lake level water level change would be about  2 bluffs high!  

What was it like 9,000 ya? I’ve sat across the bay on Malcolm Bluff looking across at Skinner’s. I’ve wondered about and been totally impressed by the ability of indigenous people who could have survived such cold, harsh times. I’m not alone. 

One prominent geoscientist wrote, “Imagine the dramatic changes these people must have lived through, and their experiences, and myths and legends created to explain those changes. If only these and other cultures had developed ways to record their history as more recent cultures have… the stories of their worlds have been lost to time, and can only be clumsily inferred and imagined from the geological clues left behind.”

Unfortunately, this modern scientific perspective devalues myths and legends: oral histories properly studied and understood ARE ways of recording history. Anthropologists who study oral history are often dumbfounded about how well “pre-paper” cultures can keep stories and histories accurate for hundreds or even thousands of years. Explorers and early settlers forgot how recently their own ancestors had depended upon stories and oral histories to maintain helpful facts and mythologies into the future. 

Tobermory’s Sources of Knowledge Forum in 2015 was titled “Life on the (L)edge of the Great Arc.” After absorbing a talk from Lenore Keeshig, geologist Daryl Cowell wished out loud that we could have a new literature featuring science and story side-by-side. Someone else asked is science verifying indigenous stories? Another person had a different answer. “No. The stories tell us that the science is heading in the right direction.” This wasn’t coming from an untrained, dreamy story lover. It was Steven Blasco, marine geophysicist with the Geological Survey of Canada, 2016 winner of the Massey Medal (awarded for outstanding career achievements related to Canada’s geography).

As a participant in Manitoulin Island’s 2017 Summer Historical Institute, Katherine MacDonald thought back to many stories she had heard her grandmother tell. These tales were told near the shore of Odauwah Gummauh/Lake Huron at Amberley, south of Kincardine. MacDonald writes: 

“We learned how to watch, and respect the power of the Lake.  And we learned the names of important landscape features around us, …having them become more a part of us, with every telling.  At the end of the summer, we would go back to the city, but the feathers and the shells in our pockets would continue to connect us to our place, remind us of what we had learned, and of who we were.

… while I had learned from my grandmother about the places and things we could see, the Ponds, the Lake, and sites in the landscape, she never shared stories with us about the places and things we couldn’t see, the spirits, the emotions, the presence of history, the myths that are real.  This cultural knowledge is not often shared.  When it is, it is usually quickly dismissed by western science.”

“One new story I heard on Manitoulin Island described a place, a mythological place, south of Manitoulin Island on Lake Huron, where Caribou could be seen walking on water, following a trail, through the middle of the Lake.  Alan Ojiig Corbiere, Nde doodenid (M’Chigeeng First Nation) explained that the ancestors told this story in the past, and used it to teach young trackers about an ancient Caribou hunt.  A mythological hunt, in a mythological place.  Shared today within communities, this type of cultural knowledge can connect people to places, as stories and memories that reinforce belonging and identity by bringing the past to the present, transcending time. 

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I haven’t talked to her, but I bet that if MacDonald would go back to Amberley today and stand at the beach and look out on to the lake, her spine might tingle. She might feel her grandmother looking with her out towards the deep water. There’s a distinct possibility—if not probability—that they both had an ancestor that stood at that same beach 9,000 ya. 

In the early 2000’s, University of Michigan’s John O’Shea, had a hunch. He knew that 9,000 ya, the the lake had been over 76m/250 feet lower. And he’d learned that at that time, and still visible underwater, there was a 200 km long narrow land bridge that would connect the Amberley shore to the modern Alpena shore on the far distant, Michigan side of Odauwah Gummauh/Lake Huron. He and others did what deep time diggers do—they looked at and dug into this land bridge.

What did they find? Ancient pollen grains which confirmed the type of habitat a caribou would exist in. Patterns of big rocks that would allow hunters to both funnel migrating caribou and hide from them. And lastly, there were smaller rocks which could not have been confused for ancient skipping stones or gravel a fish burped up. These shards would be used to butcher an animal. In perhaps the oldest Great Lakes example of cross-border shopping, these obsidian stones displayed a mineral signature placing their origin 4,000 km away in central Oregon! 

W.W. Smith wrote in the Grey County Gazeteer in 1865 that local indigenous people had a tradition that all 3 islands in the bay were connected to each other and to the Cape Croker Peninsula. Lenore Keeshig alerted me to this source. Science started to catch up in the 1930’s and 1960’s and confirm the ancient lows.

In this ancient era, Lake Huron was called Lake Stanley and Georgian Bay called Lake Hough. This “lowstand” was 70-80 m lower than the water today, +/-100 m above sea level. The northern glacier continued to melt until a drainage channel in the lake basin tub near North Bay was uncovered. Also Lake Huron lost it’s tap when Lake Superior stopped draining east and instead drained south through Lake Michigan at Chicago. Georgian Bay largely drained away. Lake Huron separated into 3 much smaller, shallower lakes. The climate had become warmer and drier with much less lake to cause lake effect weather patterns.

We can find evidence closer to home. In fact, Ray Auger has. Auger told me about going on local dives and coming across underwater tree stumps. These are not from trees that fell off a cliff and sunk to the bottom of the bay—they are trees that GREW at the bottom of the bay! He’s found such trees in deep water off Neyaashiinigmiing and Lion’s Head. Others Like Al Given have come across them near the Colpoy’s Bay islands. Still other stumps haven been found deep between Tobermory and Manitoulin Island.

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Lake Nipissing

9,500-4,500 years ago (Nipissing Great Lakes Level): This level was 14-20 m above present levels, at +/-190-196 m above sea level. 

After 9,500 years ago, the “drain plug” to the northeast of the Georgian Bay “bathtub” rose higher. Thus the water in the Bay tub got deeper and it connected back with Lake Huron. The water rose so high that there was no separate Lake Superior, no Lake Michigan, no Lake Huron, no Georgian Bay. There was just one big tub of water all at the same level subsequently named “The Nipissing Great Lakes.” The climate had recovered from hot and dry to become cool and moist.

Numerous peninsula streams had their mouths emptying into the bay in different places for long periods of time a long time ago. Katrina Keeshig’s family has safeguarded one such elevated old stream mouth area for several generations. Katrina is the Lead Technician for the support of the Coastal Waters Monitoring Program for the Saugeen Ojibway First Nation (SON). She grew up with biidwewejiwan—the sound of water flowing—with a creek located at this level literally in her backyard. She wrote to me: “Dad was obsessed with keeping the water flowing to let the fish come up. He was adamant that we never killed anything we wouldn’t eat; we would never over-fish or hunt… dad built a relationship with those fish over a lifetime. He made that migration possible….”

“My whole life I’ve felt connected to the water around home. … My dad’s grandma had a homestead in the bush back there. Working for the Health Centre, I conducted six interviews with elders. We sat for hours talking about water – the taste, the colour, the ice, fishing, skating, transportation, changing shorelines, disappearing plants and animals, invasive species. One spoke about the ice that would cover all sides of the peninsula each year, how they would travel across by sled to visit or go get groceries, how they could peer through the ice and see the rocks far  below, how they would gather on the hill at Sydney Bay and know the exact day the ice would break up and release a sound like thunder! One spoke about the marks of sturgeon along the sand; how it would appear as hoof prints where the sturgeon would come up to feed on sand cherries.  What I would give to be able to speak to those people now—4 of the 6 have passed on, along with almost all of the Ojibwe language speakers that I grew up with.” Katrina highly recommends www.biinaagami.org (below) as a  great resource for lake info and advocacy as well as the SON environmental office: www.saugeenojibwaynation.ca

Katrina shared: “Just recently, my daughter and I retrieved our spirit names. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. I had given my tobacco, my semaa, almost 15 years ago when I first began the process. … In our culture, when we know our spirit name, we know who we are in creation. Amongst many beautiful name teachings, many of which I have yet to learn and sit with—our names can provide guidance and direction as to our purpose and calling. Surrounded by friends, family and ceremony – we heard the stories of our names and called them out to the four directions. Tears burst out when I heard my name – Biidwewejiwan – the sound of water flowing and my daughters – Gizhibyashiwan – waterspout daughter. 

Hearing the story of my name felt like pulling on a thread that had been weaving itself throughout my life, and in that moment of hearing it, it felt like everything had been pulled tight. The work of understanding our stories, of understanding and honouring our gifts and pursuing our purpose is never-ending.” 

To my question of “How does the SON Environment Office benefit the general public?” Katrina responded:  “Our staff manage files on resources and infrastructure, energy, coastal monitoring, Parks and nuclear issues. The public can share concerns, learn about development proposals and the work the office is conducting on behalf of the two nations, learn about the history of the Saugeen Ojibway, our Treaty Rights, ongoing court cases regarding land claims, archeological assessments and findings, they can learn about work that the Coastal Waters Monitoring Program is doing to assess nearshore fish populations, monitor lake water temperatures, assist in tracking the movements of sturgeon and Lake Whitefish populations, monitor the efficacy of coastal wetland restoration efforts and conduct baseline inventory work in proposed development areas.  In my opinion, one of the most important roles is simply for the public to know that our nations still exist. As a public office located in between our two nations, increased exposure contributes to public awareness of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation and the work we conduct. As a result, perhaps more people will consider the history of colonial displacement and systemic oppression that still occurs to this day.”

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Current Lake Levels

4,500 years ago to Present. The lake presently is 175.5-177.5 m +/-above sea level. Levels rose until 4,500 years ago. The north shore of Huron kept recovering from the weight of the glaciers and is still rising. This coupled with the fact that the lake drains at Sarnia/Port Huron and Chicago had eroded lower, emptied more water down to current levels.

From her home at Neyaashiinigmiing, former commercial fisher Natasha Akiwenzie gazes at the lake level, about 176.10 m.a.s.l. The 10-year averages are 176.67, so it’s still down a bit. She often focuses on where the lake and the land meet. “Two winters ago there was so little snow, there was no spring runoff to wash aphids and other little bugs out to the small fish. There were very few small fish that year. … It’s a cycle—the land needs the water and the water needs the land.”

What really concerned her this past year, though, was the relative lack of ice. Ice helps protect fish and especially eggs. 

She routinely posts images of the latest Great Lakes ice cover images on Baagidiwad social media like the one below:

“It was a relatively “real” winter compared to the past few,” she said to me. But there wasn’t much ice which is concerning.

I asked, “What are a  couple things people can do to help?” She answered, “Be informed. Keep an eye on the ice on the bay. Or keep track on websites like the government one .” Two fantastic grass-roots groups she organized and facilitates include Bagidawaad and the Aki-Guardians who lead tours.

Deep Water, Deep Time: Terminology

I am not a professional linguist, archivist, historian, ethnographer, or cartographer. In fact, I’m sometimes disturbingly amateur! But passion and persistence go a long way. After much sifting through books, records, the internet and talking to a few knowledgeable people, this is what I’ve come up with so far regarding names. 

Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula:

In Anishnaabemowin, the name for the territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (S.O.N.) is Saukiing Anishnabekiing.

Naame-wikwedong (Colpoy’s Bay)

“The great sturgeon was so plentiful that the water of [of Georgian Bay] was named long known as “Nme-‘wikwedong” or Bay of Sturgeons, and so was thus named by Capt. Gother Mann in his early visit of 1788.” -The History of Cape Croker, Chippewas of Nawash Board of Education, 1960. 

-If you look at Mann’s map, you can see that “Bay of Sturgeons” is quite specifically placed on what is now called Colpoy’s Bay, not on Georgian Bay. Also one of the few features prominently displayed is the portage from the head of the bay (Wiarton) to Oliphant.

From “Gother Mann’s Sketch of Lake Huron, 1788.”Library and Archives Canada Collection.

Hay Island: Kookookoo Miinis. Owl Island

Hope Bay: Nochemowaning. Part of Hope Bay, a place of healing

Georgian Bay

A number of Indigenous Nation’s traditional territories overlapped this body of water—particularly the Anishinaabeg and the Huron-Wendat and they did not refer to it by the name of a distant king named George! Indigenous names for these waters include Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) names:

• “Waussau-Gummauh” (Shining Waters Bay) is one of the Anishinaabemowin names.

• “Mnidoo gamii” or variations like “gamiing” or “gumeeng” (Spirit Lake) has also been used. Mnidoo/manitou has also been translated as “Mysterious Lake” (Lenore Keeshig, seminar titled “Geomythology: An Anishnaabe Perspective,”Grey Roots Museum, Owen Sound ON., Mar. 25/25

Great Lake Huron

“According to the Saugeen Ojibway Nation and other information available, the Ojibwe/Anishinaabemowin names for Lake Huron include:

• Odauwah Gummauh (Odawa’s Sea).
• Also in some instances it is referred to as Gichi-aazhoogami-gichigami: This translates to “Great Crosswaters Sea.”
• Naadowewi-gichigami: This translates to “Iroquois’ Sea.”

It is important to remember that language can have regional variations, so there may be other names or slight differences in pronunciation.”

Neyaashiinigmiing (Cape Croker):

Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation was known as Cape Croker until it was renamed in 1992: Neyaashiinigmiing. The Nawash website defines Neyaashiinigmiing as: “point of land surrounded on three side by water.” I have heard it alternately translated by Lenore Keeshig as “beautiful point of land that almost looks like an island but is only partially surrounded by water.” (Lenore Keeshig, seminar titled “Geomythology: An Anishnaabe Perspective,”Grey Roots Museum, Owen Sound ON., Mar. 25/25

Interior Lakes and Streams: 

Unfortunately, I don’t (yet) know any older Anishnaabemowin names for inland lakes and streams. I often take students to Spry Lake and introduce it by saying things like, “This is called Spry Lake. We don’t know the older Anishnaabemowin name for it but we know it had one because the indigenous people used it as part of the traditional portage ( “onigam”) across the Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula 

Selected Resource List:

Bruce – Grey Geology Committee. Geology and Landforms of Grey and Bruce Counties. Owen Sound: Stan Brown Printers, Limited, 2004

Canada Dept. of Energy, Mines and Resources, Canada Centre for Mapping. Cape Croker, Ontario. ED. 2. Scale 1:50,000. Canada 1;50,000, 41A/14. Ottawa, Ont.: Canada Centre for Mapping, 1994. 

Fox, William (2015). Indigenous Life in a Dynamic Environment: the Post Algonkquin Huron Basin. Presented at the Sources of Knowledge Forum: Sharing Perspectives on the Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Bruce Peninsula. Tobermory, ON, 2015.

Grady, Wayne, The Great Lakes: The Natural History of a Changing Region. Vancouver, BC: Greystone Books, for David Suzuki Foundation, 2007.

Keeshig-Tobias, Lenore (2015). Geomythology – A First Nations View. Presented at the Sources of Knowledge Forum: Sharing Perspectives on the Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Bruce Peninsula. Tobermory, ON, 2015.

Keeshig, Lenore (2025). Geomythology: An Anishnabe Perspective. Presented at Grey Roots Museum: Spring Lecture Series, March 25, 2015. 

Kesler, Stephen E. Great Lakes Rocks: 4 Billion Years of Geologic History in the Great Lakes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan press, 2019.

Kor, Phillip S.G., Cowell, Daryl W., Karrow, Paul F., Kristjansson, F.J. Rik. (2012). The Cabot Head Archipelago: Evidence of Glacial Lake Algonkin on the Northern Bruce Peninsula, Ontario. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 49 (4), 576-589. 

Riley, John L. The Once and Future Great Lakes Country: An Ecological History. Montreal and Kingston: McGill—Queens University Press, 2013. 

Storck, Peter (2015). Searching for the Beginning: The Human Story in Ice Age Ontario. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004.

Theberge, John B., ed. Legacy: The Natural History of Ontario. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, Inc., 1989. 

Tovell, Dr. Walter M., Lorraine Brown, ed.: with Field Trips. Guide to the Geology of the Niagara Escarpment. Georgetown, Ont.: Niagara, Escarpment Commission, with the assistance of the Ontario Heritage Foundation, 1992.