The first frost had produced accumulations of ice more than two feet thick on the inland lakes and the harbours of Grey-Bruce. Spring navigation was delayed. Breaking the ice out of Owen Sound Bay was not an easy task but the Tug Harrison made its way to open water and headed north. A west wind had cleared Isthmus Bay and the tug was soon at the Lion’s Head dock and after a few minutes was on course for Cabot’s Head and then west to Tobermory.

But the crew’s attention, normally occupied with assessing ice conditions, was focused on the mainland, for there was a visible change in this familiar landform west of Halfway Rock. Several hundred feet of cliff face has lost its bond to the escarpment and spilled down the talus slope to the waters edge! It made front page news in the Owen Sound Sun Times upon the tug's return. However, more detailed information and photos had to wait till the drift ice was gone and the shoreline afforded a closer look.

On June 6th, the M.S. Normac left Owen Sound for its run to the north with Sun-Times staff aboard. The jutting shoreline allowed the Normac to come in close for visual examination and photographs.

"High up on the cliff that towered above the green line of the shore there appeared a thin white mark, just a brush mark on the dirty white of the limestone cliffs. The MS Normac of the Owen Sound Transportation Co., bound for Tobermory from Owen Sound and now about half way between her destination and Cabot’s Head, swung off her course and headed for that tiny white mark on the cliff.

Author Maitland Warder stands against one of the boulders that fell to the shore of Georgian Bay near Halfway Rock sixty years ago. Photo: Willy Waterton

"Gradually, as the boat drew nearer, the white mark seemed to grow wider. Then a strange thing became apparent. The white, shining new against the dull white of weather-beaten rock, did not stop at the green of the fringe of trees along the shore; it extended right to the water’s edge.

"Glasses were called to the aid of the naked eye. What had been merely a white line became a mass of jumbled rock. Huge chunks as big as houses could be seen piled on the water’s edge. The eye travelled back along the route they had come, rolling to a stop on the

shore after bounding through the fringe of trees above the beach. There, back of the trees, was the cliff from which they had dropped.

"By this time the boat was near enough to shore for the rocks to be seen with the naked eye. Passengers and crew crowded to the rail, while the boat slowed down to allow all a good look at the evidence of nature’s forces, an evidence that was practically unnoticeable at comparatively trifling distances but which was a forcible reminder of man’s insignificance when brought into close-up.

Warder examines cedar log jammed between the rocks. Photo: Willy Waterton

"There towered the cliff, 150 feet high, looking down on a narrow strip of beach clothed with evergreens and other trees. For the matter of about 200 feet there was a white gash on the cliff. It’s face had been cleanly shaved down for a distance of about seventy five feet, then came the huge mound of displaced rock, covering the trees and the beach and thrusting itself out into the waters of the bay.

"Up at the top of the rock to the east, could be seen a huge mark as if a giant knife had been driven into the rock and used to pry loose the chunks lying on the beach below." It was suggested among those viewing the sight, that lightning might have been responsible for the slide. This mark seemed to lend strength to this theory.

Another suggestion was that the slide was merely the result of the unusually hard winter experienced in this section. "Whatever the cause, the slide made an impressive sight at a distance of a few hundred feet, and a very small and unnoticeable mark as it quickly disappeared astern when the Normac’s engines started to throb once more."

Maitland Warder is editor of "The Crofter", a newsletter published by the Lion's Head Pastoral Charge, United Church of Canada, where this story was first published.