A painting of a sandhill, with cows grazing near a small pond in the foreground under a pink sky. A figure sits under the trees on the right in the background.
When the settlement of Berlin was founded in 1800, some families decided to move further north to an area called the Sandhills. Today, Berlin is known as Kitchener, and the Sandhills are known as Waterloo.
The hill depicted in this painting is likely a part of the Waterloo Moraine, a mass of rocks and sediment carried down by Ice-Age era glacial melting. The largest of its kind in the Waterloo Region, the moraine provides up to 75% of potable drinking water in the area. Environmentalists currently work to protect the moraine from damaging human factors such as road salt seeping into the ground water.
Though Homer Watson was more well-known for his conservation work on Cressman’s Woods, his love for the natural world has led to many artworks of the area’s environmentally significant landscapes.
