Trilobite Tribute
The Art
The Highlands Art & Tree Trail at Duntroon Highlands is more than just a stroll through nature—it’s a journey through deep time. One of the most striking installations along the trail is Trilobite Tribute, a sculptural homage to the ancient sea creatures that once thrived beneath the warm, shallow oceans that covered this region roughly 450 million years ago. The trilobite, now long extinct, is the star of this piece, but it shares the spotlight with other long-lost arthropods that roamed the Ordovician seas.
These creatures lived during a time that ended in one of Earth’s greatest extinction events, as ice sheets formed and oceans receded. The planet eventually warmed again, giving rise to new life during the Silurian period—but this recovery took millions of years.
To help grasp the immensity of this timeline, imagine being so tiny it would take you a whole year to travel one millimetre. At that rate, it would take you 10 million years to walk from the Duntroon Highlands to Collingwood. And to reach back to the time of the trilobites—450 million years ago—you’d travel the equivalent of 450 kilometres, from Duntroon to Cornwall, Ontario.
On the reverse side of the sculpture, visitors will find a panel that dives into the geological story of the Niagara Escarpment itself—connecting this ancient marine past with the dramatic limestone cliffs and rolling hills we see today.
The Artist
Ted Sivell
We’ve been living and working in Thornbury for 35 years now, drawn here by the landscape of Niagara Escarpment and Georgian Bay. Growing up with a mother who was a committed painter has been a huge influence on my life but as an artist I’m largely self taught.
I’ve always been fascinated by the progression of life through the immense expanse of deep time and the disciplined curiosity and skills of the scientists who are bringing these long vanished environments into focus.
I’ve had several opportunities to collaborate with palaeontologists on some full scale dinosaur reconstruction projects which were a childhood dream come (arduously) true.
In concept this piece draws on those experiences as it looks at the ancient geology of the Niagara Escarpment and in particular that huge extinction phase at the transition between the Ordovician and Silurian periods. Hopefully it will encourage a deeper interest in discovering more about that unimaginably distant planet.
I find myself increasingly drawn to making outdoor public art and lightweight concrete is a reliable material for creating these sculptures. I hope this piece will both entertain and inform the trail users for many years to come. Created with cement produced from the same Silurian limestone on which it’s sitting it is, in a way, itself a fossil setting out on its own small journey through time.
Through this installation, I hope people pause, look closely, and realize that the ancient past isn’t just buried—it’s all around us, written into the rock, the hills, and even the silence beneath our feet.
