Discover Toronto's history as told through its plaques
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Carved by Ice and Water
Photos by Alan L Brown - Posted November, 2013
This plaque, created by Livegreen Toronto, City of Toronto, TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation and High Park Nature, can be found beside the path around the east side of Grenadier Pond just north of the fishing pier. Here's what it says:
Coordinates: 43.642293 -79.466612 |
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How did Grenadier Pond come to be? The answer dates back to the last ice age. Around 20,000 years ago this location was covered by an ice sheet 1 km thick. Over the millennia it slowly melted, forming the huge Lake Iroquois - 95 m deeper than its successor, Lake Ontario. The steep slope at Davenport Road, 8 km north of here, marks its original shoreline (see letter A on the map).
As the ice age ended, the waterways readjusted, causing the shoreline to recede by 5 to 10 km (see B). Later the continent's landmass rebounded and the shoreline expanded again, eventually forming Lake Ontario as we know it today (see C). Water flowing from the north carved through deposits of sand and gravel left by the retreating glacier, deepening old rivers and creating new watercourses such as Wendigo Creek and Spring Creek.
About 2,000 years ago, a sandbar closed the mouth of Wendigo Creek, and the trapped water became Grenadier Pond. Over time, the pond occasionally broke through to reconnect with the lake as water levels fluctuated with the seasons. When Toronto expanded in the 1800s, railway beds and roadways built along the lakeshore created a permanent barrier, and the pond's outflow was redirected through a weir west to the Humber River.
Related webpages
ice age
High Park
Related Toronto plaques
Davenport Road
The Humber River
More
Rivers and Waterways
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