Covering 1,300,000 square kilometres, or 14 percent of Canada, the Taiga Shield is the country’s third largest ecozone. It flanks Hudson Bay, its western part lying mainly in the Northwest Territories, but also taking in small areas of northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. East of Hudson Bay, the zone extends in a wide

band across central Quebec and southern Labrador.

The region gets its name from its two most distinctive biophysical features: the Taiga forest of mainly coniferous trees interspersed with wetlands, and the Canadian Shield on which the vegetation rests. The world’s oldest rocks – folded Precambrian sedimentary and volcanic granites, gneisses, and schists more than four billion years old – can be found here. Smoothed and scoured by glaciers as late as 10,000 years ago, the landscape is generally rolling, with much of the bedrock exposed, and expanses covered with glacial deposits, most prominently eskers (more than in any other ecozone). The glaciers also took scoops out of the bedrock, creating depressions that now contain thousands of lakes and, in poorly drained areas – such as the western shores and hinterland of James Bay – extensive swamps, bogs, and other waterlogged terrain. The Taiga Shield ends in the east with a jagged and rugged coastline on the Atlantic Ocean of irregular bays, miscellaneous islands, and precipitous fjords.