In the Native Huron language, Lake Ontario literally means “Lake of Shinning Waters”. A total of over 9 million people call Lake Ontario’s watershed home and almost ¼ of the Canadian population is located in the area of the Golden Horseshoe. It is within the friendly confines this magnificent lake that many historical and culturally significant events have, and continue to occur. The Lake of Shinning Waters may not only just be a reference to its beautiful, calm appearance on a warm summer day, for this lake holds a rather mysterious, energetic presence in the psyche of all who surround its placid shores.
The inspiration for writing this journal entry began while reading LuSinda Dionne’s article “Flying Rods Over Lake Ontario”, which appears in the Winter 2010 CSD Journal. LuSinda and I both live by the lake here in Toronto, and share a common fascination and subconscious attraction to this particular body of water. I was intrigued by LuSinda’s accounts of glowing, tubular objects that have appeared to her on different dates over Lake Ontario, as seen from her 10thfloor, south facing view. This is not the first account of strange, illuminated objects over the lake that I have been able to investigate, and it certainly will not be the last. I myself am an avid researcher into matters such as these, anomalous manifestations of unknown origin, in both the physical and metaphysical realities. Through my recent research into the Subtle Earth Energy of The Golden Horseshoe, which I will be giving a short talk at the upcoming 2011 CSD conference, I have attempted to collect as much “data” on the possible origin of these energy manifestations. LuSinda’s account is only one of literally hundreds, dare I say thousands, of eerily similar Lake Ontario sightings. It’s not only the “waters” that are shining on this lake, but also what is manifesting above its surface, and the secrets that are hidden below in its cold, dark depths that may hold some answers.
First documented exploration of Lake Ontario is reported by Étienne Brûlé, a guide and interpreter to Samuel de Champlain, back in 1615. In 1632 it is was referred to as Lac de St. Louis or Lake St. Louis on cartographer maps, but previous to European integration, the lake was called “Skanadario” by the native Iroquois first nation. There exists in the historical record the fact that the Norse established an American settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland, in around 998CE. This settlement is the only accepted evidence by mainstream scholars to the presence of pre-Columbian (before Christopher Columbus) European activity in North America. I always like to explore deeper into the “plausibility” issues of any topic. Looking at further evidence, in this instance, of a much earlier, advanced group of people, or cultures, who not only reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence, south of L’Anse aux Meadows, but made their way up-river, to Lake Ontario, and beyond.
When the first English settlers came to New England they discovered numerous, well-made stone “cellars” or “chambers” in New York State. The builders of these chambers are unknown, although some archaeologists suspect the builders were Druids. The “Druids” were a priestly class from Britain, Irelandand Gaul (France) and possibly other parts of Celtic Western Europe during the Iron Age, which began about 1200 BCE. If the fact that an ancient culture constructed stone chambers thousands of kilometers away from their homeland, it is for what purpose the Druids, or any culture for that matter, construct such things. Interestingly enough, these same stone chambers that litter the forested backwoods of up-state NY reveal a strange connection to subtle Earth energies. In various experiments preformed at several of these stone chambers, it was found that the chambers acted as “energy amplifiers”, creating a flow of energy into the chamber entrance itself that was quite substantial, even to the point of reversing the polarity on a standard compass. Many subsequent investigations, namely by Hugh Newman, have found that these stone chambers are activated during morning sunrise, and have been linked to enhancing the fertility of agricultural seeds. Also, to reinforce this idea, artifacts which are believed to be of Norse origin have been found in the area of Sodus Bay, near Rochester, indicating possible earlier visits by Europeans.Did an earlier culture, possibly the Druids or similar type society, make their way across the Atlantic, and for some reason, possibly drawn to the Lake Ontario region because of the special subtle energy that seems to exist in the geography?
The suthor of this article, Chris Russak will be giving a talk at The Canadian Society of Dowsers convention next week called Subtle Earth Energy of the Golden Horseshoe Region
In 1898, the 10 year old son of a Minnesotan farmer pried a 31 inches high, 16 inches wide, six inches thick, 202 pound stone tablet from the roots of a tree while assisting his father in clearing land. The strange “tablet” had etched script on its face, known as the Kensignton Runestone, its inscription can be viewed at the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota. The inscription, after translation from a form of logistic script known as “rune”, which is used to lay out in text various forms of Germanic script, reads “8 Goths and 22 Norweigans on exploration journey from Vinland over the west. We camp by 2 skerries one day-journey from this stone. We were and fished one day. After we came home, 10 men red with blood and tourtured. Hail Virgin Mary, save from evil. Have 10 men by the sea to look after our ship, 14 day -journeys from this island year 1362.”(2) Interestingly noted in the inscription is that Vineland is what the Norse referred to as modern day Newfoundland. Firesteel for making fires; a ceremonial halbred signifying a royal expedition; a heavy battle axe with a 16 inch cutting edge; a light battle axe, used for fighting men in armored suits; a spear head; a Nordic sword, and other relics which include mooring stone pins have also been found in the Kensigton area of Minnesota. A smaller, lateral text, also appears on the Runestone and reads “have 10 men at the inland sea to look after our ship 14 days travel from this wealth/property. Year [of our Lord] 1362”(3) Therefore, if the Norse did make the journey from L’Anse aux Meadows, down the St. Lawrence and entered, traversed, settled, and explored Lake Ontario and regions west, what was their intention? Why did they make this journey? What did the reference to “wealth/property” of the region refer to? Could they have been following in the footsteps of an earlier, more advanced civilization? Could natural geological resources, mining, play a role in this mystery?
Lake Ontario’s big sister, Lake Superior, is home to some unique artifacts that not only lend support of an earlier culture exploring the Great Lake region, it hints at one of the reasons why they were here. The Minong Mine, Lookout Site Mine, and the Siskiwit Site Copper Mine, all located in various parts of Lake Superior, have been mined for copper for more than 4500 years. It is well known that indigenous First Nations did mine the copper at these locations, but the question is, who may have introduced copper mining to them? In November of 1896 near the town of Newberry, Michigan two woodsmen clearing land on a farm uprooted a tree and discovered three statues, and a clay tablet. The University of Michigan and the Smithsonian Institution were both notified of the discovery, but refused to take any investigative action. Photos of the Newberry Stone were nevertheless taken in 1898 and sent to the Smithsonian. The stone itself till existed up until 1947, but it had never been heat treated for preservation purposes, and it crumbled into dust. In 1988 the photos of the Newberry Stone resurfaced, and were found in the Michigan Archives. This sparked a renewed interest in this artifact and its origin which led Dr. Barry Fell, President of the Epigraphic Society, to decipher the tablet. He concluded the tablet was written in ancient Hittite-Minoan. He immediately compared it with the Phaistos Disk from Crete. If this was not surprising enough, the Hittite Empire was not known to archeology until it was unearthed in 1905, 9 years after the Newberry stone was uncovered!
Also, recent research in the Genome Project and other DNA studies has shown an X marker gene that is in the Algonquian speaking people but not in Asians. This new marker is however, found in the eastern Mediterranean, Spain and Western Europe. This implies some contact from these areas thousands of years ago. Whatever the case may turn out to be, it can be argued that the region of the Golden horseshoe was in fact navigated and explored, mined, and possible settled, by pre-Columbian civilizations. More importantly, these early cultures were mining this area for the riches The examples I describe do not mention the establishment of the First Nations in the area, which appeared on the scene during the last ice age (ending 12500 years ago) reportedly from Asia, and slowly made their way to settle in the Golden Horseshoe area at around 9000BCE. There, the First Nations would have met another established culture, the Clovis People.
After the retreat of the Ice Age glaciers from the Great Lakes region about 11000 years ago, Lake Ontario was actually an inland, salty sea, and the waters from the Atlantic would have flowed downhill, into the lake which was significantly below sea level at that time. This lower elevation of the prehistoric Lake Ontario was due to the immense compression of the geology by the great weight of the continental ice sheet. On a recent research visit to the Ontario Museum of Archeology in London, I was granted access to the library and the many books and journals it possesses. I stumbled upon a general map of the Southern Ontario Region title Paleo-Indian Period 11000 – 7000 years BCE. I was intrigues by the picture it painted of the early, post-glacial period of this region in 10000BCE. It showed the gigantic continental glacier retreating and located at this time just south of Sault St. Marie, and already Clovis artifacts and quarrying sites had been established! Not much is known of the Clovis Culture, other than it was widespread throughout the middle and southern portion of North America at this early time. They are not associated with the First Nations people, and most of their settlements have eluded discovery to date. What is interesting is that the Clovis were in the Lake Ontario Region at the time when the lake was a salty, inland sea. The infamous Greek writer Plato places the destruction of Atlantis around 10 000 BCE, precisely when the “unknown” Clovis people began settling in the lake Ontario region, to mine for resources.
Could there have been earlier evidence of a pre-ice age society gracing the shores of Lake Ontario? This question brings this talk back around to my research into the subtle Earth Energy of the Golden Horseshoe, and a few “obscure, yet interesting” myths that are found in local lore and texts. Using various geological and magnetic surveys of the golden horseshoe, it became quickly apparent to me that not only does this region hold strong Earth energies in its topography, but that people have utilized this special energy and geology over the course of millennium. In my CSD Conference talk, I will go into detail about the locations and physical manifestations of this regional “energy topography”, but for this article I will focus on what I have termed “The Lake Ontario Runway”.
The Lake Ontario Runway – Picture and Map By Chris Russak
Before looking into the “Runway”, a brief description of the geological history of the region is important. The Great Lakes geological foundations (excluding the water)were formed about 1.2 million years ago, when two fused continental plates split apart, creating what is now called the mid-continental rift. A subsequent second split of the lower half of the two plates in the St. Lawrence region about 550 million years ago created the lower lying basins of what would eventually become Lakes Erie and Ontario. It must be stressed at this point in time that there was no water in these newly formed basins, they were dry areas, with numerous rivers that fed south into a lower latitude inland sea centered in the present day American mid-west. The Great Lakes as we know them today, as fresh water reservoirs, were only recently formed by the melt water of the retreating glaciers filling in the basins at the end of the last ice age, 11000 years ago.
The “Lake Ontario Runway” formation itself is comprised of 21 highly magnetic peaks that all are linked together by above average geomagnetic energy plateau. The total length of the anomaly as a whole is 95km starting from Port Davidson area, over the Niagara escarpment , and extends Northeast through Lake Ontario and finished just off the shoreline and the outflow channel of the Rouge River . It has an average width of 20km, but does exceeded 50km width at its widest point. It is composed of highly magnetic, energy laden, rocks and minerals in the form of magnetite, hematite, limonite, and iron, with more complicated compounds of these minerals like loadstone. Not only is this formation comprised of these magnetic, crystalline, elements, they themselves can and will produce an electromagnetic field that is both powerful and dynamic. In comparison to other local, regional, and continental mining regions, this deposit is huge in relative density and potential. With the majority of the deposit deep below the lakebed, it is very hard see the functionality of mining this resource today, but what about in the past?
As we discussed, the possibility that ancient mining operations may have occurred throughout the Great Lakes region in pre-Columbian history, and the possible cultures that may have been responsible. Also the fact that Lake Ontario was once a dry, low-lying region, void of water in any abundance prior to the last ice age and before that gives rise to more unique possibilities. Is there any information that may point towards and even earlier, pre-ice age civilization in the Lake Ontario Region? A civilization that’s entire existence would have been totally erased by the advancing, and later retreating continental glacier.
Examining the geomagnetic magnetic maps of Southern Ontario and up-state New York Region, it is quite obvious that there exists not only a large “energy anomaly” within Lake Ontario itself, but also a duality to the overall energy balance that exists south of the lake and north. In Ontario, the overall energy is relatively neutral, with punctuations of high energy permeating through this neutral energy fog. This is not the case once you pass south of the “Lake Ontario Runway” feature I described before. South of this lake anomaly, the overall energy balance, the differential in energy between a high energy region and low energy region, is quite broad. New York Sate, the south shore and inland from Lake Ontario has a negative energy background that is pierced with small, very strong energy centers. This pattern begins to reveal itself starting just south of the Lake Ontario Runway anomaly, expresses itself within the Lake then heads south and continues on land. It appears as if the Lake Ontario Runway anomaly is a delineation point, a line drawn in the energy “sand” so to speak, where a difference in expressed Earth Energy can be seen North and South of this feature.
Can this difference in Earth Energy north of the Runway (Ontario) and South of the Runway (New York State) be related to the fact that the Clovis Culture settled in Ontario, while the later Druid population were called to build stone chamber in New York State? Is it also possible that the rich area of crystalline magnetic minerals in the lake Ontario Runway were mined thousands of years in the past, thus almost drawing in the Clovis and Druid, along with subsequent cultures, to this particular area? Studying the bathymetry, the depth and relief, of Lake Ontario, a strange physical anomaly exists whose origin still lacks a proper scientific explanation to this day. Called the “Sculptured Ridges of the Rochester Basin” the feature is a series of distinct NE-SW ridges occupy the floor of Lake Ontario’s deepest basin, the Rochester Basin. These ridges, having a relief of 15-25 meters and a natural spacing of 250-1000 meters, are remarkable in their linear aspect and uniform width. Most have relatively flat tops with steep side slopes, some of which are steeper to the northwest, others to the southeast, and some are symmetrical in cross-profile. This feature does, to some extent, resemble drumlins, naturally occurring, elongated mounds that are created after a glacial retreat, who’s orientation of length points towards the retreating glacier, like a compass needle. Although plausible, the drumlin theory in my mind is weak, due to the fact that all up-state New York drumlin features point North, the direction of glacial retreat direction agreed upon by all geologists, and the Sculptured Ridges of the Rochester Basin” all point East-North-East, almost at a 90 degree angle from where they should point. Basically, the Basin Ridges do not match the same, proven, drumlin features found only a few kilometers inland.
If the Rochester Ridges, submerged at Lake Ontario’s greatest depth of 250 meters or over 800 feet, are not drumlins, then what may they possibly be? Well, it could be possible that a very early civilization, for whom other future cultures like the Clovis, Druids, Norse, First Nation, Viking and post-Columbian European later imitated in purpose, established a settlement in the lake Ontario Region, mining its rich resources from what is now the lake bed. The “Sculptured Ridges of the Rochester Basin”, with symmetrical and sloped sides, do remind me of a technique still used today to extract minerals and rocks, open-pit mining and strip mining. It is not out of the question that this possibility could exists, given the work of such notable researchers in the field of very ancient, pre-diluvian cultures, such as Graham Hancock, Carmen Boulter, and Michael Cremo to name a few. Whatever the true reality of our history in this region of the world turns out to be, science is always a good resource for building a historical foundation, but we as a modern civilization must have an open mind and eager heart to truly understand the layered and sometime misunderstood nature of our time here on this planet.
As an interesting note, UFO and historical researcher Jennifer Jarvis has made an association with these Lake Ontario lights, orbs and craft, coupled with a historical discovery. Miss. Jarvis goes on to say in a 1999 interview “Based on my research into rock art and cave paintings, it would appear that many early inhabitants of planet Earth depicted similar events, people and creatures. The artwork on the rock faces in Utah show very similar shapes and symbols to those found in the Bancroft Petroglyphs in central Ontario. Of course, the inhabitants of the Bancroft area and the wilderness of Utah might have had common ancestors, so that the art styles could possibly have been passed down through the generations. The common images that I have noticed in the rock paintings have been very tall figures with black triangular bodies, and small heads atop these bodies. But, as to what these represent it is still not clear. They could represent deities, or they could represent dwellers of the spirit realms. On the other hand, they may represent people from somewhere other than planet Earth.” (1)
Returning to LuSinda Dionne’s accounts of witnessing glowing, tubular objects over Lake Ontario, one only needs to do a simple Google search to uncover the treasure trove of unidentified objects that a multitude of people have witnessed over the years in this region. I have personally spoken with LuSinda about her experiences here in Toronto, and the objects she has witnessed over the lake and the emotional, intuitive connection she possesses that resonate with objects and lake itself. Her testimony mirrors dozens of firsthand personal accounts I have had the privilege to research about this phenomenon of lights, and dare I say flying craft, over Lake Ontario. On the surface, as a skeptic at heart, I investigated the aircraft flight plans into and out of Pearson Airport, which was my fist red flag when it comes to identifying UFO’s over the Lake. It became clear very early that aircraft returning from the south do fly across the lake, but their flight plans do not match the direction or altitude that these “orbs, light, rods, and craft” are taking. Moreover, the witnesses bring forward physical evidence in the form of photographs and video, for which I have looked at, and cannot, at the moment, come a definite conclusion about. This phenomenon of “Lake Orbs, lights and craft” has been around for decade, even more than a century here in the region. One only needs to read the books of Hugh Cochrane entitled “Gateway to Oblivion – the Great Lakes’ Bermuda Triangle.”(1980) Jay Gourley has also written a very interesting book called the “Great Lakes’ Triangle.”(1977) These two works go into great detail about the observations and testimony of the witnesses, and hint at the causality. In any event, since these two books were published, the Lake Ontario phenomenon has not ceased, and continues to this day.
In a book titled “Underground Alien Bases” written by Commander X, who claims to be a former military intelligence operative, it is stated that Lake Ontario has possible underwater UFO base and city. The “Toronto Tunnels” are the entrance leading from the mainland to this subterranean city. Commander X goes on to state that the there is a small opening to the underground tunnels off Parliament Street in downtown Toronto. The entrance is between two apartment buildings, and leads to the tunnels via the sewers. Although a very interesting story at this point, Commander X does not go into any other details about this alien base or subterranean city other than the tunnels themselves were known to the local Iroquois culture in their legends. The information presented by Commander X pertaining to the Lake Ontario Base is scant, he also details a secret underground alien base in Dolce, New Mexico that was later verified. Phil Schneider, one of three people to survive the 1979 armed conflict between the large Grey Alien Race and US intelligence and military at the Dulce underground base, was found dead in January of 1996, due to what appears to be an execution style murder. He was found dead in his apartment with a piano wire wrapped around his neck. According to sources, it appeared that he repeatedly suffered torture before he was finally killed. Seven months prior to his death, Schneider did a lecture on the forces he had discovered at Dulce. Mr. Schneider’s story can be found documented on numerous websites and his lecture can be found by entering Phil Schneider – D.U.M.B.S (Deep Underground Military Bases) into YouTube Video search.
Lake Ontario holds many mysteries and enigmas. Many of the stories and evidence I have touched on here clearly demonstrates that those of us who call this region home are not fully aware of the subtle energies and realities that the Lake manifests. Water itself holds many mystical life-force properties, and also plays a major role in subtle energy exchange between the earth and its conscious inhabitants. It is possible that the combination of water with the crystalline mineral deposits on the lake bed and the semi-dormant fault line that created the Lake basin itself can work together to produce the electromagnetic light phenomenon that many witnesses speak of. It is also possible that the living energy of the 9 million people that call the shores of Lake Ontario home may also work in combination with Earth energies and geology to manifest intent, thought or other collective energies into a tangible form which can be witnessed. Even the historical record of the area shows signs that even the ancient understood the importance of this region, and the Lake, and made a point to not only explore and settle here, but harness the energy resources that are definitely present. There are many questions still to be addressed about the interactions of energy on the physical and metaphysical levels that surround the “Lake of Shinning Water”, but one thing is certain, those of us who live by its waters have been called here for a common purpose.
(1) 1999 Jennifer Jarvis (ORBWATCH) Interview by: Interviewed by M.Q. Osiris, summer 1999
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1714.htm
(2) The Story of the Kensigton Runestone http://kensingtonmn.com/runestonepg.html
(3) The Story of the Kensigton Runestone http://kensingtonmn.com/runestonepg.html