But the Cordilleran ranges with their wider seacoast gave
up gold and other metals, and lumber and fish to lighten and
beguile the burden of their crossing, and the Precambrian rock
had fresh gifts for its cast-off dependents. As if in compensation,
the rock, in the act of resisting the picks of railroad builders, gave
up minerals which would bear some of the cost of its own resistance
and contribute materials to the industrial order rising along its
edge.

The Precambrian shield dominates the history as it dominates
the landscape of Canada. It has set the terms and moulded the
forms of Canadian life and having had the first word will, in its
time, have the last.

-viii-