Watersheds in Southern Ontario - Part 3

This article is number three in a series that artistically conveys watersheds in Ontario. Last week, I put out the call to readers and invited them to suggest the name of a watershed they wanted to see. I had several requests, so I spent some time this week putting together the maps below.

The first map actually represents several rivers that start in Algonquin Provincial Park and make their way east through the Muskoka lakes before converging into the Go Home River and discharging into Georgian Bay. The stream network shows some interesting features. In the southwest, there are many rivers and tributaries that flow parallel to one another. In this part of Ontario, the Canadian Shield is the predominant geologic formation and these igneous and metamorphic rocks were formed millions of years ago. The parallel flow directions of the streams follow the direction of these rock features.

The second watershed is one that I had to investigate. A reader asked for the Tay River watershed which contains the Tay River, a tributary of the Rideau River that discharges into the Ottawa River in the City of Ottawa. This smaller watershed flows from the southwest (near communities such as Wagarville, Parham, Oconto) to the northeast, through Perth, Ontario before draining into Lower Rideau Lake, which is part of the Rideau River system.

The third and final watershed for this article is my home watershed of the Grand River in southwestern Ontario. I’ve already provided more details about the Grand River watershed previously, but I wanted to show the watershed in its entirety in this series. Shown below, the Grand River flows over 300 kilometres from north to south/southeast and drains into Lake Erie.

If you have a specific request or a favourite watershed, water-drop it in the comments below and I’ll draw it up!

Thanks for reading the Water Droplet! Stay tuned for more interesting articles on water. To get email notifications of new articles, sign up here: