By Bill Bialkowski, Snug Harbour
If you have not yet held this magnificent book in your hands and flipped through its beautiful pages I recommend you do so – you will be richly rewarded. It is available in most bookstores at $60 and is worth every penny. The copyright is held by the Georgian Bay Land Trust and was published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside in 2017. The photography is spectacular. Nick Eyles, professor of Geology at the University of Toronto, and director of GBLT is the editor. He is also the author of three of the 13 chapters. He has assembled a team of eminent authors including Karl Schiefer, expert on freshwater ecosystems, and archeologist Ron Williamson, plus nine others, to weave a tale of Georgian Bay from early geological time, through the last ice age, to our current flora and fauna, the arrival of humans, and through to the present day. This truly is the story of Georgian Bay, and in my opinion, it has never been told so well before.
The range of topics spans: the 30,000 islands – largest freshwater ecosystem in the world, Manitoulin, the largest fresh water island, Wasaga, the longest freshwater beach, rocks and banded gneisses, trilobite fossils, water pH, wetlands, walleye and gar, loons, gulls, mergansers, notched spear points, rattlesnakes, bear, moose, deer, lake Hough at the bottom of the present ‘Bay’, indigenous peoples both pre-and-post contact, arrival of settlers, and finally the art of Georgian Bay. It is hard to put down., if you have spent any time admiring this wonderful place.
Download this story and the entire WCA Spring Newsletter May 2018 in PDF format (1.5MB).