Ensuring the beauty of the Bay of Islands, Ontario is maintained for today and future generations.
This event is sponsored by the Escarpment Biosphere Conservancy with the help of BICA volunteers! See the e-invite Here: Heaven's Gate Opening Invitation
Join us for the opening of our largest wilderness preserve to date, Heaven's Gate - Kitchitwaa Shekwaandem, on July 16th. 2,000 acres of wilderness between the La Cloche Mountains and Killarney Provincial Park are permanently conserved, come celebrate with us! To register for free, click here!
Heaven’s Gate Opening Ceremony – July 16th
1:00pm: Ceremony at Gate 3
1:30pm: Hike to Mt Arabella
5pm – 7pm: Reception at Whitefish Falls Community Center. Free food and drink, no alcohol.
Please register for the event at the EBC website: Heaven's Gate Grand Opening - July 16th!
It is with great excitement that we will be gathering together again for the Bas Bleu Book Discussion in July 2022. There are some notable changes to our group, given that our second (Ann Thoburn) dear founder, Marianne Schafer, along with husband Mike, have sold their camp. Marianne’s contributions to the Bay are innumerable. The Bas Bleu Book Discussion (Marianne prefers the term Discussion instead of Club) is one of her long lasting and integral contributions to life in the Bay, through enhancing our feeling of community with literature, discussion and friendship. Marianne has given to me her impressive journal which chronicles all previous books, camp locations, participants and discussion leaders. Amazing! We will ensure that her legacy and spirit continue through the future book discussions with the intricate keeping of the journal and our love of literature with our friends in the Bay.
Thank you Marianne. You are so missed.
Below are the details for the 2022 Bas Bleu Book discussion. All are welcome to join us so please share this information with those who are new to our community or who are unaware of Bas Bleu. We look forward to seeing everyone there!
Lindsay Richards
Book: The Sisters Brothers by Canadian Patrick deWitt
When: Thursday July 21, 2022, 9:30 am for a prompt 10:00 startWhere: Bluebell Island, Home to the Scott, Allison and DeVoe Families
Save the Dates! You're Invited!
The BICA Board of Directors is excited to announce the summer schedule for 2022! BICA members can once again look forward to our favourite events after a two-year hiatus. We have made a few changes this year, particularly to the AGM and the August Long Weekend so be sure to mark your calendars. More details about each event can be found on the Events Calendar. Saturday, July 16 -- Celebration of Heaven’s Gate – This event is sponsored by the Escarpment Biosphere Conservancy with the help of BICA volunteers and will include a hike and a gathering at the community center. Saturday, July 23 -- Fish Derby and Fish Fry – Baker Island TP2430 Saturday, July 23 -- Sunday, August 7 -- Love Your Bay Every Day! We kick off two weeks of loving our Bay including shoreline cleanup of Styrofoam and plastics as well as phragmites cutting. We will need your help so please be sure to volunteer a few hours during these two weeks! Thursday, July 21 -- Bas Bleu Book Discussion Saturday, July 30 (Note 3:00PM start time) Annual General Meeting with wine (& beer) and cheese to follow, Ruby Island TP2567 Sunday, July 31 -- Afternoon Sailboat Race Saturday, August 6, 4PM -- Social/Raffle/Auction, Monarch Island TP2570P.S. We are now accepting membership fees for 2022. Sign in to manage your account and pay your dues by clicking here.
GBA is supporting Georgian Bay Forever (GBF) and the two MPPs who have proposed Bill 279 which will require new clothes washing machines to have filters installed. This legislation is the result of GBF’s successful research projects in Parry Sound and Collingwood, which clearly demonstrated that installing these filters reduces microplastics pollution, helps protect the water, environment and ultimately anyone in the area consuming the water. Bill 279 received unanimous approval at First Reading and we are asking for your support on a letter writing campaign to MPPs to ask them to get this Bill passed before Queen's Park rises in June for the election. Visit this webpage for details on how to support the campaign by sending a letter to Queen's Park: https://bit.ly/33q2QJ2
The Fall GBA Update features the Bay of Islands and our community in articles written by BICA's own Liz Phillips. On page 8 you will find an article titled Return to the Bay: US Residents Get Back to their Happy Place. And on page 10 another article called Keeping Members Engaged During Covid. For more reading, this Fall's FOCA News was also recently distributed and can be accessed here.Happy Thanksgiving to all our American members! We are wishing you a joyous reunion with friends and family.
This note touches on geologic, forest, soil, and human use of Heaven’s Gate and the La Cloche with a view to understanding a bit more about what is there and why the area is special.
There are obstacles to
understanding the La Cloche’s past. The
first is grasping the time span. Each
step took more time than we can imagine.
But it has not stopped, and we can see it. Trees are taller in our time. Put a piece of limestone under a downspout
for 20 years. It will erode an inch or
so.
Secondly, the forces are
beyond our experience. We can bend
steel; but cannot move or bend plates of the earth. We can estimate the power and time needed;
but the numbers are beyond our ken.
Third, facts and information to
test the opinions we rely on in lieu of facts are sparse.
And a caution: This note is recent
gleanings by an amateur, not insights of a disciplined professional.
Ancient Geology, In Stages
None of this has ended. It is happening so slowly we don’t notice
recent changes. But the plates are still
moving with a minor tremor every few years. Erosion continues and sediments are still
being laid.
More Recent Geology, Five Ice Ages
We’ve had five ice ages. The first started 35 million years ago. The ice was two to four miles thick. The weight pressed the ice out and the ice
front moved away from the center. Snow
at the front increased its area. Soil
and loose rocks were picked up into the glaciers and carried south. Ice melted and everything fell out. Some washed to distant oceans, some stayed nearby
as sand dunes or southern soil. The
Michigan is sand dumped by the glacier. Today
we are in an inter-glacial period between the fifth (most recent ice age) and
the next one.
For Heaven’s Gate and the La Cloche,
ice and melt waters scoured and rounded the mountains. The scouring left striations and scratches in
the hills that show the direction of glacial movement. And there are visible concussions where rocks
falling from the glacier, struck the mountain left bruises.
As the glaciers melted there were
several related changes.
The Ice Ages sterilized the
soil. As a result, there are no native
earth worms in the area and soil bacteria and fungi are very different from
those found in unglaciated areas farther south.
Soils and Vegetation
At Heaven’s Gate and in much
of the La Cloche soils got a head start.
Areas that rose out of the lakes as melt waters were reduced in volume
and as land rebounded had the advantage of bringing lake sediments into the air
and with them a mix of near shore vegetation.
They also enjoyed fertilizer from fish and water plants. This is apparent in the south facing valleys with
their rich vegetation.
And it helps explain why near
shore areas have better soils than higher areas. Elevated areas are bare rock, wind exposed, 4
degrees F colder because of altitude and have a shorter growing season.
Manitoulin soils have
limestone ten feet below and sand and clay from the glaciers. In the La Cloche, the limestone is now hard
glass-like quartzite and can’t contribute to soil. Soil formation here relies on vegetation. This is an important distinction between
north and south.
The total absence of native
earth worms and presence of unusual soil bacteria and fungi means the soil has
no distinct layers. Without worms, leaf
litter accumulates in deep slowly rotting layers. It is difficult to see a difference between
soils a foot deep versus four feet. With
earth worms, litter breaks down in a year and soil has distinct layers. In
addition, worms change the fungi and bacteria that make soil nutrients
available to plants, often specific to individual species. Worms kill off the unique fungi making the
soil unsuitable for many native mushrooms, North American orchids, and trees. Worms of any kind should be kept out of the
North or much of what is unique will be lost.
Vegetation, soil, soil
bacteria, fungi, is all new since the melt. We have an idea of what was growing based on
studies of pollen in lake sediments. Again, in stages:
1 From the melt about 10,500 years ago until
7,500 years back the area was spruce forest. Spruce can exist in poor cold wet soils and
cope with high winds. Think Newfoundland.
2 Spruce and Jack pine were replaced by
White Pine and Birch roughly 5,000 years ago.
3 And 4,000 years back hemlock, maple,
some oak, and elm, warmth loving hardwoods appeared. Hardwoods mark the north south boundary by
being found only in the protected valleys with longer growing seasons and older
deeper soil.
4 Varying with altitude and distance to
the lake some of each of these forest mixes remain. Heaven’s Gate’s forests have been stable for 2,500
years despite fire and forestry. These
ecosystems evolve slowly, only adding hardwoods in four millennia. It’s what healthy ecosystems do.
Human Impacts
Native people arrived soon after
the melt. Less than 2,000 years. (I don’t know of any signs of native
settlement on Heaven’s Gate.) The south
slope is a deer wintering ground and still good hunting.
1649, Iroquois fought Ojibwa at the potholes just
west of Heaven’s Gate. It was the last try
by the Iroquois to move north. Perhaps
it gave the French another 100 years in North America and may have meant
Ontario did not come under early English control as part of New York or
Pennsylvania, and stayed separate from the 13 Colonies and so British, then
Canadian.
I think the top of Ararat was used for a survey
beacon (1820) to help settle the Canada-US border.
Also following the war, in the 1830’s and 40’s,
many natives in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota migrated to Canada to
remain under British rule and avoid the Indian Wars in the US.
1845 Wallace Mine was patented. It followed a more formal approach than the
mine at Bruce Mines a few months before with a view to establishing stable
relations with First Nations through the treaty process. Three holes were dug. Some nickel extracted. And there has been exploration in the 1960’s
and 70’s, but no evidence of anything likely to be in demand in quantities that
would attract interest.
Trapping and bounties greatly reduced cougar,
wolves, and wolverines. They are
recovering but wolverines have not been in the area in a long time.
Logging, primarily by the Spanish River Logging
Company from 1882 to 1922 was a major change.
The company wasted timber, falsified accounts, and took trees where they
had no permit. The pilings near Swift
Current and chains and eyes in rocks for holding booms are remaining signs of
their time in Bay of Islands. The near
shore of Heaven’s Gate was cut. Happily,
the re-growth is similar to the original forest, though the oldest white pine
are only 100 to 140 years old, rather than 150 to 500 years old. We will have 200 plus year old pine in six
decades. And we still have cedar,
hemlock and maple that were not cut and have two centuries plus notched up.
Future human activity. Keep earth worms out. Small forest fires if any. Hiking. Cross country skiing
Why Is It Special?
Age: Heaven’s Gate has both the oldest exposed
rocks on earth and some of its youngest soils.
Undisturbed: In spite of cutting the forest is little
changed in 4,000 years, 2,500 years for hardwoods. Bird life, vegetation, has carried on with rich
variety and sanctuary for a dozen listed rare species.
Soils: Soil in glaciated areas had no worms and
different fungi and bacteria leading to plant life that is denser, and more
responsive to the change in seasons than that in the south.
Juxtaposition: The La Cloche and to a lesser degree, east
Georgian Bay, Muskoka and the 1,000 Islands are where the North comes farthest
south. We get the romance of the north
and summers of the south. Bay of Islands
has the best of this, as our north is rugged mountains, our south Manitoulin.
Heritage: Small but important parts of our history for
natives and newcomers happened on and near Heaven’s Gate. Perhaps, a largely unmarked event that led
Ontario to be Canadian. It is the
setting for early and well-known Group of Seven paintings. The art is safe in galleries for a
century. Now an important original is
also safe.
We love it:
Loving something or someone draws us closer and involves us. Becoming involved we enjoy it more; know we
are part of it and have some responsibility for them or it.
Our most important use of Heaven’s Gate is to be
thankful for it, and by extension, for all creation. If we let it, Heaven’s Gate connects us to
nature and creation, each other, and the creator. It is where North best meets South and where
we best meet each other and all we revere.
Justin Montgomery has prepared these latest graphs for 2020.
Justin Montgomery has prepared the final graphs for 2019. Click on the title above to see the graphs.
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July 31- Today we had another successful Phragmites cut. It is getting a bit easier each year as we weaken the root system. Had an amazing crew today urged on by Michael Dewson and Ann Atkey: Dan Galipeau from Pig Island brought his roofing harness and wielded the power cutter, Ed Diehl who ended up spending the morning in the water up to his chest hand cutting all the stragglers and submerged plants, and Liz Phillips’ family plus friends from Germany – they were 3 adults and 7 kids who did an awesome job gathering up cuttings and bagging them. Shout out to Kieran who spent most of his time in the water gathering up the floating cuttings. Kids were a bit disappointed they could not run the power cutter but Liz bought them all ice cream after so it ended well. Don Datz and Bay Villa Lodge supplied the barge and will burn the bags we collected. Huge thank you to the whole gang who worked so hard to protect the Bay from this invasive species.
Bay Of Islands Community Association