Queens Quay and Spadina

In 1908, workmen digging a water tunnel in Toronto Bay to the east of Hanlan's Point at a depth of 70 feet below water level discovered a layer of blue clay. The layer of clay, about six feet wide, contained over one hundred human footprints. These prints appeared to represent the steps of a family, as described by W. H. Cross, the City Inspector who witnessed the find. The feet seemed to be "moccasined", according to descriptions.

Extract from the Toronto Evening Telegram, 14 December 1908:
"It looked like a trail... You could follow one man the whole way. Some footprints were on top of the others, partly obliterating them. There were footsteps of all sizes, and a single print of a child\'s foot... All of the footprints toed in and you could see the hollow between the ball and the heel in many of them... in some places you could see where the toe had been driven in and the clay had shot up under the heel."

Both Professor A.P. Coleman, a well known geologist of the day, and David Boyle, of the Normal School Museum, were consulted.

"If the statements of these men are true, and there is no reason to doubt them, and the prints were in the blue clay, it is the most important find of the interglacial period..."

While at the time, the blue clay stratum was thought to date to the interglacial period before the last glaciation, it is now thought that the clay was laid down during the Wisconsin glaciation suggesting that the find may represent a family heading for downtown Toronto between 11,000 and 10,500 years ago!

The article goes on to say that the "footprints" were covered in concrete the same day, making it impossible, now 100 years later, to resolve this question. It's conceivable that a group of people walking across wetlands just north of the lake during a period of low water levels in the Lake Ontario basin left their footprints in the old exposed lakebed of Lake Iroquois.

Today, it remains an intriguing mystery.

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