Think about the first hour of your day. The water in your shower may have fallen as rain on the Oak Ridges Moraine. The light switch draws on electricity from a nuclear plant on Lake Huron or a dam on the Niagara River. The wheat in your toast probably grew on the Prairies, and the phone in your hand contains copper, nickel and lithium dug out of the ground somewhere in the world. Before breakfast is over you have used resources from half a dozen regions of Canada. This lesson asks two big geographic questions about them: what kinds of resources are there, and why are they found where they are?
What counts as a natural resource
A natural resource is anything found in nature that people can use to meet their needs and wants: water, soil, trees, fish, minerals, oil, wind, sunlight. Whether something counts as a resource depends on people, not just nature. It needs a use, the technology to get it and a price that makes the effort worthwhile. The thick, tar-like bitumen of northern Alberta was known for centuries, but it only became a major resource once new technology made it profitable to turn it into oil. Geographers also separate a resource (all of it that exists) from a reserve (the part we know about and could recover with today's technology at today's prices).
| Type | What it means | Canadian examples | The big risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Renewable | Can replace itself by natural processes within a human lifetime or so, if it is not overused | Boreal forests, Atlantic cod and Pacific salmon, Prairie soils, groundwater | Using it faster than it renews: overfishing, overcutting, soil erosion |
| Non-renewable | Exists in a fixed amount, or forms so slowly (millions of years) that once used it is effectively gone | Oil and natural gas in Alberta, nickel in Sudbury, gold in Timmins, potash in Saskatchewan, diamonds in the NWT | Running out; damage to land and water during extraction; mine closures that leave towns without jobs |
| Flow | Is renewed constantly and must be used where and when it occurs; it cannot be used up, but it often cannot be stored easily | Wind on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, sunlight in southern Ontario, falling water at Niagara, tides in the Bay of Fundy | Variability: no wind or sun means no power unless there is storage or backup |
Where Canada's resources are found
Resources are not scattered randomly. Their pattern follows the physical geography you studied in Unit 2: the rock underneath, the climate, the soils and the water. Ancient igneous and metamorphic rock holds metals; sedimentary rock laid down in old seas holds oil, gas and potash; deep grassland soils grow grain; heavy rainfall grows giant trees; and cold currents meeting warm ones feed rich fishing grounds. Once you know the landform regions, you can predict most of Canada's resource map.
| Resource | Where it is found | The physical geography behind it |
|---|---|---|
| Metallic minerals (nickel, copper, gold, iron, uranium) and diamonds | Canadian Shield: Sudbury, Timmins, Red Lake, the Labrador Trough, Saskatchewan's Athabasca Basin, the NWT | Mostly ancient igneous and metamorphic rock formed deep underground, where heat and molten rock concentrated metals (the Athabasca Basin's uranium lies where a layer of sandstone rests on this older Shield rock) |
| Oil, natural gas and potash | Interior Plains (the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in Alberta, Saskatchewan and northeastern BC); offshore Newfoundland and Labrador | Thick layers of sedimentary rock laid down in ancient seas; buried sea life became oil and gas, and evaporating seawater left potash salts |
| Farmland | Southern Prairies; Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Lowlands; valleys such as the Fraser and Annapolis | Flat land, deep fertile soils (black chernozem under the old grasslands) and a long enough growing season |
| Forests | The boreal forest across the Shield and the north; temperate rainforest on the Pacific coast; mixed forest in the east | Enough precipitation and a growing season for trees; mild, very wet Pacific air grows huge cedars and Douglas firs |
| Fish and seafood | Atlantic coast (Grand Banks, Gulf of St. Lawrence, Bay of Fundy) and Pacific coast; also the Great Lakes | Shallow continental shelves where cold and warm currents mix, stirring up nutrients for plankton; salmon rivers in BC |
| Fresh water and hydro power | Great Lakes, Shield lakes and rivers, big rivers in Quebec, Manitoba, BC and Labrador | Glaciers carved basins that filled with water; rivers drop steeply over the Shield's edge and through mountain valleys |
Location and accessibility
Finding a resource is only the first step. A deposit is only worth developing if it is accessible: close enough to roads, railways, ports or pipelines, in a climate where people can work, and rich enough to pay for the cost of getting it out. The diamond mines north of Yellowknife depend on a winter ice road (the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road) that is usually open for only about eight to ten weeks each winter, so most heavy supplies must be trucked in during that short window. The Ring of Fire in Ontario's Hudson Bay Lowlands (which you met in Unit 2) holds valuable minerals, but no all-season road reaches it yet. Accessibility can change, too: a new road, a higher price or a new technology can turn an ignored deposit into a working mine.
- Size and grade: how much is there and how concentrated it is (a high-grade ore needs less rock moved per tonne of metal).
- Depth and form: a deposit near the surface is cheaper to reach than one a kilometre down.
- Distance and transportation: the cost of moving the product to markets and of bringing in workers, fuel and equipment.
- Climate and terrain: permafrost, muskeg, mountains and long winters raise costs.
- Price and technology: high world prices or new methods can make a marginal deposit worth developing.
- Rules and rights: environmental assessments, and the rights of First Nations, Métis and Inuit whose lands are affected (Lesson 6).