page_title: Volcanism of Canada
section_title: Greenstone belts
hierarchical_section_title: Volcanism of Canada / Economic geology / Greenstone belts
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Matachewan and Mistassini dike swarms in Canada
context_page_description: The volcanism of Canada is represented by many types of landform including lava flows, volcanic plateaus, lava domes, cinder cones, stratovolcanoes, shield volcanoes, submarine volcanoes, calderas, diatremes, and maars, along with examples of more less common volcanic forms such as tuyas and subglacial mounds. It has a very complex volcanic history spanning from the Precambrian eon at least 3.11 billion years ago when this part of the North American continent began to form.
  Although the country's volcanic activity dates back to the Precambrian eon, volcanism continues to occur in Western and Northern Canada where it forms part of an encircling chain of volcanoes and frequent earthquakes around the Pacific Ocean called the Pacific Ring of Fire. But because volcanoes in Western and Northern Canada are in remote rugged areas and the level of volcanic activity is less frequent than with other volcanoes around the Pacific Ocean, Canada is commonly thought to occupy a gap in the Pacific Ring of Fire between the volcanoes of western United States to the south and the Aleutian volcanoes of Alaska to the north.
context_section_description: The predominantly volcanic Archean and Proterozoic greenstone belts throughout Canada are important for estimating Canada's mineral potential. Consequently, geologists study greenstone belts to understand the volcanoes and the environment in which they erupted, and to provide a working model for mineral exploration. The 1,904‑ to 1,864‑million-year-old Flin Flon greenstone belt of central Manitoba and east-central Saskatchewan is one of the largest Paleoproterozoic age volcanogenic massive sulfide ore deposits in the world, containing 27 copper-zinc-(gold) deposits from which more than 183 million tonnes of sulfide ore have been mined. The 2,575‑million-year-old Yellowknife greenstone belt in the Northwest Territories is the host for world-class gold deposits with total production of 15 million ounces of gold. In the Archean Hope Bay greenstone belt of western Nunavut, three large gold deposits have been known as Doris, Boston and Madrid, while the 2,677‑million-year-old Abitibi greenstone belt of Ontario and Quebec is the second most prolific gold producing area on Earth; the most prolific gold producing area is the Witwatersrand hill range in South Africa.
caption: Map of the 2,500- to 2,450-million-year-old Matachewan dike swarm and the 2,500-million-year-old Mistassini dike swarm of eastern Canada
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