Georgian Bay Is Hiding Something Nobody Talks About
The Hidden Provinces
8,048 views
Somewhere under Georgian Bay lies a steamer that sank in 1882 with more than a hundred people aboard, and nobody has ever found her. The peninsula on its western shore was promised to the Saugeen Ojibway forever, and forever lasted eighteen years. Ancient trees are still rooted on its bottom, forty metres down, and for thousands of years three Great Lakes drained out a back door in its northeast corner.
What's beneath YOUR town? Personalized 15-page report — the rock, the name, the vanished places, your town's oldest map → https://hiddenprovinces.com
This documentary makes one full lap of the bay. It starts with the wreck of the Asia in 1882 and the two teenagers who survived her, then the Waubuno of 1879 and the dream that could not be checked. The Thirty Thousand Islands, Parry Sound, Go Home Bay and the Group of Seven, the marine railway at Big Chute, and Beausoleil Island. Wendake, the epidemics of the 1630s, the Feast of the Dead at Ossossané and the reburial of 1999, the fall of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons in 1649 and the winter on Christian Island. The schooner Nancy at Wasaga Beach, the railway that built Collingwood, and the James Carruthers, found in 2025. Owen Sound and the grave of Tom Thomson at Leith. The Bruce Peninsula, its 1,300-year-old cedars, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, Treaty 45½ of 1836, Treaty 72 of 1854, the 2021 ruling of Justice Matheson, and the case still scheduled for 2030. Tobermory and Fathom Five, Manitoulin and the Sheguiandah quarry, Wiikwemkoong, Killarney and the lake A.Y. Jackson saved. Then the French River, the way Champlain came in, and the thousands of years when the upper Great Lakes drained out through North Bay and the Ottawa River before the rising land shut the door.
Sources include the Ontario Heritage Trust, Grey Roots Museum, the Canadian Heritage Rivers System, Parks Canada, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation and Ontario court records, the Jesuit Relations, the Huron-Wendat Nation, the International Joint Commission's upper Great Lakes study, the Georgian Bay Great Lakes Foundation, the University of Michigan's Lake Huron archaeology project, and the Journal of Great Lakes Research (2026). Where the record is thin, on the Asia's death toll, the Waubuno dream, Thomson's grave and the Griffon, the narration says so.
Subscribe to The Hidden Provinces — beneath the map.
16 Comments
I love seeing places I know and have spent many yearly trips with my brother and dad and now with Jr.
"The SS Asia steamship sank in Georgian Bay during a violent gale on September 14, 1882, resulting in the loss of approximately 123 lives. [1, 2 3:08 ]
Georgian Bay Is Hiding Something Nobody Talks About
The Hidden Provinces
8,048 views
Somewhere under Georgian Bay lies a steamer that sank in 1882 with more than a hundred people aboard, and nobody has ever found her. The peninsula on its western shore was promised to the Saugeen Ojibway forever, and forever lasted eighteen years. Ancient trees are still rooted on its bottom, forty metres down, and for thousands of years three Great Lakes drained out a back door in its northeast corner.
What's beneath YOUR town? Personalized 15-page report — the rock, the name, the vanished places, your town's oldest map → https://hiddenprovinces.com
This documentary makes one full lap of the bay. It starts with the wreck of the Asia in 1882 and the two teenagers who survived her, then the Waubuno of 1879 and the dream that could not be checked. The Thirty Thousand Islands, Parry Sound, Go Home Bay and the Group of Seven, the marine railway at Big Chute, and Beausoleil Island. Wendake, the epidemics of the 1630s, the Feast of the Dead at Ossossané and the reburial of 1999, the fall of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons in 1649 and the winter on Christian Island. The schooner Nancy at Wasaga Beach, the railway that built Collingwood, and the James Carruthers, found in 2025. Owen Sound and the grave of Tom Thomson at Leith. The Bruce Peninsula, its 1,300-year-old cedars, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, Treaty 45½ of 1836, Treaty 72 of 1854, the 2021 ruling of Justice Matheson, and the case still scheduled for 2030. Tobermory and Fathom Five, Manitoulin and the Sheguiandah quarry, Wiikwemkoong, Killarney and the lake A.Y. Jackson saved. Then the French River, the way Champlain came in, and the thousands of years when the upper Great Lakes drained out through North Bay and the Ottawa River before the rising land shut the door.
Sources include the Ontario Heritage Trust, Grey Roots Museum, the Canadian Heritage Rivers System, Parks Canada, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation and Ontario court records, the Jesuit Relations, the Huron-Wendat Nation, the International Joint Commission's upper Great Lakes study, the Georgian Bay Great Lakes Foundation, the University of Michigan's Lake Huron archaeology project, and the Journal of Great Lakes Research (2026). Where the record is thin, on the Asia's death toll, the Waubuno dream, Thomson's grave and the Griffon, the narration says so.
Subscribe to The Hidden Provinces — beneath the map.