The Canadian Shield
Discover Canada series.
Canada is one of the most geographically blessed countries on earth. One of the most important formations of this geography is the Canadian Shield.
The Canadian Shield is a geological shield that makes up the North American Craton. It’s the ancient core of the North American continent. It’s over four billions years old and has some of the oldest rocks on earth. It began to develop during the Archean Eon with a foundation dating back to Earth’s earliest history.
The Canadian Shield area stretches from the northern parts of the US, continuing north from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, and covers over half of Canada.
It had towering mountains formed by the collisions of early tectonic plates, creating ranges as vast as the Himalayas and larger than most of today’s mountain systems. A billion years ago, one orogeny created the Grenville Mountain Range, which stretched from Quebec through Ontario and down to Texas.
Hundreds of millions of years and several ice ages, with 3 km thick ice, have ground and eroded the mountains down to our current topography. As glaciers moved and retreated, they cut the basins of the Great Lakes and the thousands of beautiful lakes we see on our map today. This is also part of the reason why Canada has around 20% of the world’s freshwater.
The Canadian Shield was part of the Laurasia Plate, which broke off the supercontinent called Pangaea, and later split into North America, Europe, and Asia. It was part of the then North American crust.
As this supercontinent traveled Earth throughout tropical and subtropical zones, it entered the Carboniferous Period, which formed rich plant life, lush rainforests, and established land animals.
A couple of hundred million years later, as Pangaea was starting to break apart, we entered the Cretaceous Period which gave us dinosaurs, birds and many other big changes but the Period came to a sudden end when a large asteroid hit earth where today’s Gulf of Mexico is…or is it Gulf of America now?
The Cretaceous Period gave us dinosaur museums and our oil and gas industry, while the Carboniferous Period gave us coal. Carboniferous means coal-bearing. The historic Sydney Coal Field came from that era.
Canada’s coal mines had a crucial part in the American Revolution, and actually in becoming a nation, as coal was the critical ingredient (energy) to industrialization. Coal equaled wealth and power.
To appease the unrest in the British colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada, which became Canada West and Canada East, which are now Ontario and Quebec, were united into the Province of Canada to solve governance issues and focus on commercial interests.
The only problem is that surveying the Province of Canada found no coal but the Maritime Colonies, which were much more self-sufficient, had coal, mostly in Nova Scotia.
The British sought to reduce costs and increase the Province of Canada's self-sufficiency. The end of the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866 by the US, which was a free trade deal with British North America, put the natural resources economic aspect of the Maritimes at risk, which helped push the Colonies and the Province of Canada into Confederation. Industrialization in Ontario and the railway from the Colonies to this new market cemented the creation of a new country.
Tariffs and the fear that some of ‘Canada’ would be taken to be a part of the US actually played a role in the formation of Canada. Imagine that.
While surveying what is now Ontario and Quebec, they found no coal at the time, but they did discover bitumen and the southernmost part of the Canadian Shield. It led to the establishment of the world’s first petroleum company, the International Mining and Manufacturing Company, in 1854.
The surveyor, Sir William Edmond Logan, who founded the Geological Survey of Canada and has a couple of mountain peaks named after him, was an incredibly devoted individual to his profession. Canada owes so much of its recognition to Sir Logan’s obsession-like devotion to Canada’s geology.
He opened geological museums in Canada and promoted Canada’s minerals and even asphalt in different expositions abroad. While he was showcasing his work, it started to generate tremendous interest in Canada’s natural resources. His exhibitions worked like a tradeshow for Canada.
Canada’s mineral riches were well known many years earlier as French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec City, learned from the local First Nations in the 1600s, who knew of the minerals and quarried copper in the area for thousands of years.
The Canadian Shield’s rocky terrain and thin soil didn’t make it an intuitive area for settlements. Farming turned out to be all but impossible for many, so it was easier just to be where farming was fruitful. The area is even referred to as “the country of our defeat” in a poem by Al Purdy, as it turned into abandoned communities and farms.
The riches of the Canadian Shield weren’t rediscovered until there were commercial interests in the explorations, and even then, much of it by accident, just because it is so rich.
The Hudson Bay Company, via a royal charter, got control of most of the Canadian Shield land for years but focused on the fur trade. Its explorers randomly came across minerals but left them alone as fur was the priority. What a lesson for businesses here.
The fur trade came to its end, and HBC sold most of its land back to Canada. They did try to venture into resources with the Hudson’s Bay Marland Oil Company in 1920s, but it was a failure. While HBC totally missed what is probably one of the biggest opportunities for wealth in human history, they did play a role.
HBC’s waterways and canoe maps were immensely helpful for prospectors to navigate the Canadian Shield. Their Posts became hubs for miners, and where many minerals nearby were found.
The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway made significant discoveries as the route went through the rugged terrain of the Canadian Shield to Manitoba and the West. Blasting through the Canadian Shield led to the discovery of the Sudbury Basin, one of the world’s largest nickel mining areas.
Rail made it possible to get in supplies and heavy equipment into the Canadian Shield, and once things were discovered, rail played a critical part in their transportation out to markets. Towns and settlements quickly built up along the railways, making exploration possible and the foundation for Canada’s natural resources economic boom.
Silver in Cobalt, gold in Timmins and Kirkland, copper and zinc in Rouyn-Noranda, and the Flin Flon greenstone belt in Manitoba, one of the richest mining areas on earth, were all possible and discovered thanks to rail. CPR built a line to The Pas and Flin Flon, bringing in everything needed for mining and building a concentrator, power plant, and smelter. Canada was off to the races.
The age of the Canadian shield benefited it (us) from the tectonic activities, volcanic activities, and catching a meteorite, giving it the time to form its vast natural resources, which are now one of the most productive mining areas in the world, holding some of Canada’s largest deposits.
Most of these mining activities and discoveries are under 150 years old. We are just getting started here. Let’s get this country to work.