Canadian Shield

David Spencer's Education Paragon is a free educational resource portal helping David Spencer's secondary school students, their parents and teaching colleagues with understanding, designing, applying and delivering assessment, curriculum, educational resources, evaluation and literacy skills accurately and effectively. This wiki features educational resources for Indigenous Aboriginal education, field trips for educators, law and justice education, music education and outdoor, environmental and experiential education. Since our web site launch on September 27, 2006, online site statistics and web rankings indicate there are currently 1,888 pages and 20,185,651 page views using 7.85 Gig of bandwidth per month. Pages are written, edited, published and hosted by Brampton, Ontario, Canada based educator David Spencer. On social media, you may find David as @DavidSpencerEdu on Twitter, as DavidSpencerdotca on Linkedin.com and DavidSpencer on Prezi. Please send your accolades, feedback and resource suggestions to David Spencer. Share on social media with the hashtag #EducationParagon. Thank you for visiting. You may contact David Spencer here.

The following resources are helpful to parents and teachers:

1. Book: Supporting Successful Transition from Primary to Secondary School by Tina Rae (2014)
2. Book: Book: Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv (2008)
3. Book: Digital Tools for Teaching: 30 E-tools for Collaborating, Creating, and Publishing across the Curriculum by Steve Johnson (2013)
4. DVD video: Canadian Popular Music in the '60's, '70's & '80's by EMI Music Canada (2012)
5. DVD video: Canada: A People's History produced by Mark Starowicz (2001).
6. Book: Fire in the Bones: Bill Mason and the Canadian Canoeing Tradition by James Raffan (1999)

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Canadian Shield

"The Canadian Shield, also called the Laurentian Plateau, or Bouclier Canadien (French), is a large area of exposed Precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks (geological shield) that forms the ancient geological core of the North American continent (North American or Laurentia craton), covered by a thin layer of soil.[3] It is an area mostly composed of igneous rock which relates to its long volcanic history. It has a deep, common, joined bedrock region in Eastern and central Canada and stretches North from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, covering over half of Canada; it also extends South into the Northern reaches of the United States. Human population is sparse, and industrial development is minimal,while mining is very prevalent." (Wikipedia, 2013)

"Along the edge of the Canadian Shield edge lie many of the great lakes and waterways of Canada: the eastern shores of GREAT BEAR LAKE, GREAT SLAVE LAKE, LAKE ATHABASCA and LAKE WINNIPEG; the northern shores of LAKE OF THE WOODS, LAKE SUPERIOR and LAKE HURON; and the north shore of the ST LAWRENCE RIVER." (TheCanadianEncyclopedia.com, 2011)

"Locked deep in the impermeable granite of the Canadian Shield lies a reservoir of water so ancient it may have been cut off from the surface for more than half the age of Earth itself." (Globe & Mail, 2013)

"4.4 million square kilometers (1.7 million square miles)" (CSERN,2009)

"Great Lakes - St. Lawrence Precambrian Region has three separate sections, it is united by two distinctive characteristics: the mixed forest of coniferous and deciduous trees and the ancient bedrock of the southern edge of the Canadian Shield. The entire region is a transition zone, where species from the deciduous forests to the south intermingle with those of the boreal forests to the north and, to a lesser extent, those from the western plains, the Atlantic coast and the Arctic. Each section is remarkably similar in appearance - knobbly wooded hills incised by rivers and streams and dotted with thousands of lakes. Rivers and streams run slowly, backed up by numerous beaver dams and rocky ledges." Parks Canada, 2013)

"The Canadian Shield is Canada's largest physiographic region extending from Alberta eastward to Newfoundland & Labrador and northward to Greenland, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The Shield covers a total area of 4.8 million square kilometres, and almost two thirds of Ontario." (Nature Conservancy Canada, 2013)

Mining and Economics

"The Shield is one of the world’s richest areas in terms of mineral ores. It is filled with substantial deposits of nickel, gold, silver, and copper. Throughout the Shield there are many mining towns extracting these minerals. The largest, and one of the best known, is Sudbury, Ontario. Sudbury is an exception to the normal process of forming minerals in the Shield since there is significant evidence that the Sudbury Basin is an ancient meteorite impact crater. The nearby, but less known Temagami Magnetic Anomaly has striking similarities to the Sudbury Basin. This suggests it could be a second metal‐rich impact crater." (CanadianShieldFoundation.ca, 2009)

"In northeastern Quebec, the giant Manicouagan Reservoir is the site of an extensive hydroelectric project (Manic‐cinq, or Manic‐5). This is one of the largest‐known meteorite impact craters on Earth. The Flin Flon greenstone belt in central Manitoba and east‐central Saskatchewan is one of the largest Paleoproterozoic volcanic‐hosted massive sulfide (VMS) districts in the world, containing 27 copper‐zinc‐ (gold) deposits from which more than 183 million tons of sulfide have been mined." (CanadianShieldFoundation.ca, 2009)

"The Shield, particularly the portion in the Northwest Territories, has recently been the site of several major diamond discoveries. The kimberlite pipes in which the diamonds are found are closely associated with cratons, which provide the deep lithospheric mantle required to stabilize diamond as a mineral. The kimberlite eruptions then bring the diamonds from over 150 kilometers (93 mi) depth to the surface. Currently the Ekati and Diavik mines are actively mining kimberlite diamonds." (CanadianShieldFoundation.ca, 2009)

The Smoking Hills

"The Smoking Hills are located on the east coast of Cape Bathurst[1] in Canada's Northwest Territories, next to the Arctic Ocean and a small group of lakes. The cliffs were named by explorer John Franklin,[2] who discovered them on his 1826 expeditions. They contain strata of hydrocarbons (oil shales), which have been burning continuously for centuries." (Wikipedia, 2012)

See the video of the Smoking Hills.

"Low flight over the Smoking Hills in the Canadian Arctic (between Kugluktuk and Inuvik). There are seams of lignite under the tundra that spontaneously ignited many hundreds of years ago upon exposure to air, and have been burning continuously since. The hills, a few hundred feet tall and located on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, smoke like volcanos, and in some cases so much coal has burned that the overlying rock has collapsed on itself."