An independent site about Canada as physical geography — the processes that made the ground
Autray
mrcautray.com
Five grounds · seventeen entries
Every entry is one place, located
Figures sourced or flagged
Section 01

The Shield

Half a country of bare Precambrian rock. Half the country is the same rock: Precambrian crust that was already ancient when the Cambrian began, stripped of its cover by ice and left bare, scratched and full of water. These three entries are about what that surface is and what the last glaciation did to it.

An aerial of bare pink granite bedrock with hundreds of small lakes in the hollows, sparse black spruce, flat overcast light
Plate IRock and water in roughly equal measure. The drainage is younger than the basins it occupies.Photo: Canadian Shield Ontario · Wikimedia Commons

Entries in this section

3 entries
  • The Canadian Shield

    Exposed Precambrian rock over roughly half the country, scraped bare by ice and dimpled with the lakes the ice left.

    Labrador to the Northwest Territories · Precambrian crust, glacially stripped
  • Why so many lakes

    Glacial scour leaves closed hollows in hard rock, and there has not been time to fill or drain them.

    Boreal Shield · Ontario, Manitoba, Québec · Glacial scour, incomplete drainage
  • Striations

    Scratches gouged by rock frozen into the base of moving ice, all pointing the same way.

    Shield outcrops · Ontario, Québec, NWT · Subglacial abrasion

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