THE WATERLOO KAME MORAINE REVISITED - NEW LIGHT ON THE ORIGIN OF SOMEGREAT LAKE REGION INTERLOBATE MORAINES

The Waterloo moraine is an irregular tract of sand hills located centr ally in the interlake peninsula of southwestern Ontario. It sits astri de the interlobate tone between the Lake Ontario ice lobe from the eas t and the Huron-Georgian Bay ice lobe from the west and northwest. Gor ed holes to bedrock, east-west across the moraine, reveal the internal stratigraphy of the moraine. The Catfish Creek Till (Nissouri Stade) and older tills pass beneath the moraine with no indication of an olde r core. The bulk of the sand is associated with the overlying Maryhill Till (Port Bruce Stade), so the moraine was formed late in the histor y of glaciation. Late readvances deposited Maryhill Till from the east and Tavistock Till from the northwest as a patchy till cap on the mor aine, much dissected by meltwaters during ice retreat. Similar finding s in other interlobate moraines raise questions about earlier ice flow directions and patterns. We suggest that similar interlobate deposits formed earlier were erased by glacial erosion during subsequent glaci ations. While the term palimpsest may still be applied to the topograp hy of these interlobate moraines, it was only the latest ice fluctuati ons that made them so.