This is Canada’s west coast, a 1650 kilometre stretch from the Yukon / Alaska border in the north to British Columbia’s southern boundary with the state of Washington. As well as the mainland, the ecozone contains Canada’s Pacific islands, including Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Mountains and ocean define the region. Canada’s highest peak, Mount Logan, is located here, rising to 5959 metres above sea level in the Yukon’s Kluane National Park, in the most northerly part of the zone. The Coast Mountains of British Columbia, part of the Pacific Ocean’s “Ring of Fire,” dominate most of the ecozone. Made up mainly of hard, crystalline gneisses and granite rocks, these mountains are covered at their highest elevations with snow and icefields, such as those around British Columbia’s highest peak, Mount Waddington (4016 metres), from which flow glaciers 16 kilometres in length. The steepness of the Coast Mountains has resulted in magnificent fjords along the coastline. Slicing inland, some for 200 kilometres and more, the fjords rise in sheer cliffs from the water, reaching heights of up 2000 metres.

A notable exception to the defining mountainous character of most of the Pacific Maritime ecozone is the relatively small lowland area in the south. This encompasses the Fraser Delta, the Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia, and the