This is the story of how the Canadian landmass evolved -- piece by piece -- from a long-lost continent some four billion years ago into one of the most spectacular and geologically significant areas on Earth.

Discover fantastic landmarks from coast to coast! Canada is a large, diverse and beautiful country. This latest book in the Canada Close Up series focuses on the history of many unique and well-known Canadian geographical landmarks, and the processes that shaped them. This book is crammed full of fun and interesting facts that will keep children entertained as they learn about: Niagara Falls The Rocky Mountains Mount Logan The Alberta Badlands The Bay of Fundy Mount Logan Gros Morne National Park Barnes Ice Cap The Athabasca Sand Dunes Manicouagan Crater

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.