Georgian Bay

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Coordinates: 45 ° 21 ′  N , 80 ° 54 ′  W

Map: Ontario
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Georgian Bay
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Ontario
Georgian Bay

The Georgian Bay (French Baie Georgienne , German also Georgsbucht ) is a large bay in North America , which is separated from the main part of the Huron Sea in the northwest by the Manitoulin Island and in the southwest by the Bruce Peninsula . It belongs to the Canadian province of Ontario .

The bay is about 200 km long and up to 80 km wide. It covers an area of ​​15,000 square kilometers . Part of this area, 347,000 ha is, as since 2009 Biosphere Reserve of the UNESCO recognized. The bay lies on the southern edge of the Canadian Shield , which was shaped by the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age around 11,000 years ago. The western part of the bay with the Bruce Peninsula geologically belongs to the Niagara strata .

The granulite emerging on Bonnet Island is the only known location of the extremely rare mineral menzerite- (Y) , a yttrium-rich garnet, so far (2018) .

Archaeological finds indicate human settlement in the southern regions of the Canadian Shield from the 7th millennium BC. After. At the time of the first European immigration in the 17th century, the Ojibwa and Ottawa , who called themselves Anishinabe , lived here along the north and east banks of the bay . The Wyandot (or Hurons) and Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) populated the land south of the bay.

The first Europeans in this region were the French explorers Samuel de Champlain and Étienne Brûlé in the 17th century. French Jesuits established the Sainte-Marie-au-pays-des-Hurons Mission , Ontario's first European settlement, in 1649 on the site of today's Midland Ward , Ontario .

Georgian Bay was first mapped in 1815 by Commander William Fitzwilliam Owen , who named the bay "Lake Manitoulin". In 1822 it was given its present name by the British admiral and geodesist Henry Bayfield in honor of King George IV .

In the Georgian Bay are thousands of islands that the name of Thirty Thousand Islands ( German  "Thirty Thousand Islands" wear), including the larger Parry Island and the Christian Island. The island Manitoulin at the northern end of the bay is the largest island in the world in a lake .

Georgian Bay is the northern terminus of the Trent-Severn waterway . The southern end point is the mouth of the Trent River , near Trenton , in the Bay of Quinte .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. UNESCO Biosphere Reserves ( English ) UNESCO . Retrieved April 11, 2013.
  2. ^ Edward S. Grew, Jeffrey H. Marsh, Martin G. Yates, B. Lazic, T. Armbruster, Martin Locock, SW Bell, MD Dyar, HJ Bernhardt, O. Medenbach: Menzerite- (Y), a new species, {(Y, REE) (Ca, Fe2 +) 2} [(Mg, Fe2 +) (Fe3 +, Al)] (Si3) O12, from a felsic granulite, Parry Sound, Ontario, and a new garnet end-member, {Y2Ca } [Mg2] (Si3) O12. In: The Canadian Mineralogist . tape 48 , 2010, p. 1171–1193 ( unibe.ch [PDF; 5.3 MB ; accessed on March 4, 2018]).