Canadian Shield: The Rocks That Made Canada - Softcover

Eyles, Nick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554551404 ISBN 13: 9781554551408

Publisher: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2010

Synopsis

Being a Canadian carries with it a tangible sense of living on the edge of a vast barren interior. Only named as such in 1883, the Canadian Shield is an empty immensity of lakes, bogs, rivers, forest and protruding ribs of hard Precambrian crystalline rock that covers more than half of the total land area of Canada.

This book traces the geologic evolution of the Shield, its first tentative exploration by humans starting 11,000 years ago as the last great ice sheets withdrew, its changing economic fortunes as Europeans penetrated its remote rocky vastnesses for furs and metals, and its transformation in the twentieth century into a national icon to Canadians.

Regarded as 'barren' and of no value, much of the Shield was given away in 1670 to a single London-based fur trading company, the Hudson Bay Company, who jealously guarded its northern domain until 1867. This two hundred year long monopoly created a virtual government over a huge piece of North America. Without the HBC, much of it would have passed into American hands and there would have been no 'Canadian' Shield or country called Canada. As a nation, we are indebted to hard rock.

About this title

About the Author

Nick Eyles; photographs by Ed Bartram, Tess MacIntosh and Arnold Zageris

Edition details

• Publisher: Fitzhenry & Whiteside
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1554551404
• ISBN 13: 9781554551408
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 150