The highlands

The Appalachians, vestiges of an impressive mountain system, trace a vast arc between the state of Alabama and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Along the way, they graze southern Quebec and totally envelop the Gaspé Peninsula as well as the four Atlantic provinces. These mountains, which once boasted lofty peaks, today offer a relief softened by millions of years of relentless erosion. They present a varied landscape where hills, plains and peaks are tangled in harmonious disorder. From its 1,268-metre height, Mount Jacques Cartier on the Gaspé Peninsula dominates the Appalachian system on the Canadian side.

	Fishing boats, Nova Scotia ©2003 ICN-RCI / Hemera

In the long-distant past, some areas of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were covered with luxuriant moist forests, whose buried remains provided the precious coal deposits that fuelled the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.

Along the western edge of North America arises the barrier of the cordillera. This mountain system extends more than 4,800 kilometres, from Alaska to New Mexico. Structurally, the Canadian cordillera consists of two parallel mountain chains—the Rockies on the east and the Coast Mountains on the west—which enclose a series of plains and highlands that geologists call the interior plateau of British Columbia.

Mount Logan, Kluane National Park, Y.T. ©2003 ICN-RCI / Hemera

While the rocks that make up the mountains are old, the mountains themselves are still in their earliest youth, which explains their grandiose contours. The snowy peaks of the Rockies are more than 3,000 metres high, while the Coast Mountains can lay claim to the highest peak in Canada, Mount Logan, which rises to 5,959 metres. Indeed, it continues to improve on this record: it is growing by approximately two centimetres per year, since the pressures that led to its formation are still at work. In fact, the cordillera arose in a zone of turbulence, along a fault where the Pacific Ocean plate plunges under that of the North American continent. Thus, powerful subterranean forces periodically shake the land and bring volcanoes back to life. A violent earthquake caused heavy damage on Vancouver Island in 1946. When such seismic events occur in the oceanic crust, they cause formidable sea waves called tsunamis. One of these ground swells devastated Port Alberni, also on Vancouver Island, in 1964.

	Rocky Mountains near Golden, B.C. ©2003 ICN-RCI / Hemera

The last volcanic eruption on Canadian soil occurred less than 150 years ago. And the brutal reawakening in 1980 of Mount Saint Helens in the United States, scarcely 300 kilometres from the Canadian border, serves as a reminder that a sudden shift could also cause the Garibaldi and Meager volcanoes, north of Vancouver, to awaken from their slumber.

Far to the north, at the outermost reaches of the world, the inaccessible Innuitian Mountains occupy Canada's northernmost islands, beyond the Parry Channel. While they are as old as the Appalachians, they have maintained a higher profile, as exemplified by Barbeau Peak, which rises to 2,616 metres on Ellesmere Island. These remote places are the refuge of the glaciers that covered most of the Canadian land mass 18,000 years ago.