Living with Rocks.

Canada is a fairly young nation as compared to the many other nations of the world. We celebrated our 150th birthday last year! We are a mere child on the world globe.

But yet, we are old…. as old as time

How so?

Because our land is largely made up of the Precambrian Shield.

The Precambrian Shield was already present five hundred million years ago, submerged below the Cambrian Sea, which covered most of the land that is now North America.

The Canadian Shield

_{photo © Heather Johnsgaard} We are a beautiful land, a hardy land, made up of a whole lot of rocks! The Canadian Shield, or Laurentian Plateau, makes up nearly 50 percent of our land mass. It is estimated rocks found on the northern shore of Hudson Bay are over 4 billion years old, an indication the rock was created about 300 million years after Earth came to be. The Canadian Shield is part of the North American Craton, or continental crust, which extends from Mexico to Greenland.The majority of the crust is buried deep underground and covered by soil and other debris. The Canadian Shield refers to the exposed portion of that crust. The Canadian Shield encompasses parts of Labrador, Newfoundland, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

This is not farm land

Horseshoe shaped and surrounding the Hudson’s Bay, the Canadian Shield is largely muskeg, stunted forests, lakes and rock.

It was not considered lucrative land as it was not suitable for farming, but history has proved us wrong.

The land turned out to be a treasure trove of natural resources, with a bounty of minerals and forestry, and an abundance of fresh water.

These became the foundations for mining, atomic and electrical power, and for the pulp and paper industries.

This is where I live... it is not barren

Mostly covered by boreal forest which includes spruce, pine, fir, tamarack, hemlock, and eastern red cedar, you will also find poplar, birch, maple, willow, ash and aspen. It is not uncommon to see the trees growing right out of cracks in the rocks. Another feature of the Canadian Shield is that you will also find thousands of small lakes throughout, the result of the ice age and glacial erosion. It is estimated that Canada has about 20% of the Earth's fresh water, with about 7% of that being renewable. _{photo © Heather Johnsgaard}

So much more!

Rocks are so much more than their face value, they are so much more than history, and they are so much more than irritating annoyances that get caught in our tiller tines.

They are an important part of our existence, our past, present and future.

And they make great canvases for painting on!

From years gone by, painting on rocks has left lasting messages which are still being discovered even today.

In ancient times, there were petroglyphs which were rendered by removing part of a rock's surface through incising, picking, carving, or abrading, the surface as a form of rock art, and petrographs are images that are drawn or painted on to a rock face.

The Canadian Shield... I am so glad I have had a chance to get to know you!!

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