My city under the sea

twelve thousand years ago, my city (Ottawa) was under the sea - the Champlain Sea specifically, an inlet of the Atlantic that existed at the end of the last ice age. You don't have to look too hard to find the evidence, and I've seen some of it myself.

I saw some of the remains of this sea last year on the hiking trails in Pine Grove forest, where I like to spend time with nature in the late summer and early fall after the bugs die down. As I was walking through the forest, I found a sandy spot beside the trail, and the NCC had posted one of their explanation signs. The sign explained that the sand was from a ten thousand year old beach along the shores of the Champlain Sea. I looked over - it did look like a beach actually. I tried to picture myself staring out at horizonless water from the old beach, in the direction of my home.

Some of the other remaining traces are kind of fun, too. For instance, some of the local lakes in Ottawa/Gatineau have what they call around here "red trout." These "red trout" are in fact salmon - atlantic salmon that evolved into freshwater lake fish when the sea diminished into the rivers and lakes that abound in the area today. The fish in the Ottawa river could escape downstream to the ocean, but not the ones in the lakes. Other ocean species exist in some of our lakes - Pink Lake has stickleback, for instance.

And then there's a the fact that from time to time, someone digging a well will find whale bones. :-)