Ice Age

When Glaciers Covered the Land

Much of the landscape of Hastings today was shaped by the glaciers of ancient ice ages. At one time the ice cover over Hastings was more than 1.5 kilometres thick. But it wasn't static: it moved, scouring the soil off the rocky hills of northern Hastings and depositing it on lands to the south.

The ice sheet over Hastings County flowed from northeast to southwest, pushed by the tremendous pressures of a large ice cap centred in northern Quebec. The bottom of the ice sheet was covered with embedded silt, clay, sand and gravel. As the glacier ground along, it had the effect of a gigantic sheet of sandpaper, wearing down hills and mountains and scooping out valleys.

Another ice sheet crept in from the southeast. The Oak Ridges Moraine, a range of hills created by debris pushed together by the ice, marks the contact point of these two ice sheets.

The Great Lakes were created as the last glacier retreated about 10,000-12,000 years ago. Lake Ontario is the remnant of a much larger body of water called Lake Iroquois, formed by an ice dam during the retreat of a melting glacier. The level of the lake was approximately 30 metres (100 feet) above the present level of Lake Ontario and its shoreline can be traced south of Stirling and Tweed. The lake drained to the southeast, through present-day New York State.

Pancake Hill, located approximately 21 kilometres north of Belleville and 14 kilometres southwest of Tweed, is on a sand plain and includes Lake Iroquois beach and shorecliff features. Remnants of other beaches can be found in southern Hastings.

As the Laurentian ice shield retreated, the St. Lawrence Valley was opened. The weight of the thick glacial ice had depressed the Lake Ontario outlet to about 40 metres below today's levels, allowing the Champlain Sea to reach into the Lake Ontario basin. Even today the land at the eastern end of Lake Ontario is still rebounding slowly from the ice age.

Evidence of glacial activity can be found throughout Hastings County. Drumlins and eskers create the rolling hills south of Highway 7, while some signs of glacial activity can be found amid the rocky hills of northern Hastings. These isolated areas create pockets of farmland in the north, such as The Ridge near Coe Hill and the highlands around Boulter.