Canadian Cordillera

Canadian Cordillera, westernmost physiographic region in Canada. The region features extensive mountain ranges and includes most of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. The Canadian Cordillera posed a serious physical barrier to the political and economic development of western Canada until the completion of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. The Canadian Cordillera contains some of North America’s largest recreation and wilderness areas.

The Canadian Cordillera covers approximately 1.6 million sq km (600,000 sq mi), or 16 percent of Canada’s territory. The region extends from the northern Yukon Territory to the United States, occupying most of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory and small parts of the Northwest Territories and Alberta. The Cordillera extends beyond Canada’s borders to the south, through the western United States, Central America, and South America. Geographers often describe the Cordillera as the “mountain backbone” of North and South America.

In Canada, this region contains a series of mountain ranges separated by valleys and plateaus, all with a north-south orientation. The highest mountains in the region are also the highest in Canada: Mount Logan (5,959 m/19,551 ft) and Mount Saint Elias (5,489 m/18,008 ft), both located in the Saint Elias Mountains of the southwest Yukon Territory. Along the west coast of British Columbia, the fjord coastline and snow-capped Coast Mountains have a striking natural beauty. Mount Waddington (4,016 m/13,176 ft) is the highest peak in the Coast Mountains. The Rocky Mountains form the boundary between British Columbia and Alberta and also represent the Continental Divide between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The highest point in the Canadian Rockies is Mount Robson (3,954 m/12,972 ft) in British Columbia.

Geologists consider the Cordillera, formed some 40 to 80 million years ago, to be a young geologic feature. During the formation of the Cordillera, movement in the earth’s crust compressed the flat-lying sedimentary rocks of western Canada into a series of mountain ranges. The continental plates along the Pacific Coast continue to move. As a result, the region has been the site of sporadic volcanic and earthquake activity in recent centuries.

The mountains, the nearby Pacific Ocean, and differences in latitude cause the climate, plants, and wildlife within the Canadian Cordillera to vary widely. The Coast Mountains in the west force the moist Pacific air masses to rise, resulting in precipitation along the coast. As these air masses move eastward, they lose their moisture in the mountains, so that when they descend into the plateaus and valleys on the eastern side of the mountains, little precipitation occurs. The higher elevations and more northern latitudes have a very cold and dry climate, not unlike the arctic climate. Along the west coast, the long growing season results in a coastal temperate rainforest where giant Douglas fir trees grow. Inland, where the climate turns colder and drier, the smaller trees of the northern coniferous forests replace the temperate rainforest.

The forests represent the major natural resource of the Cordillera, followed by minerals, fish, and hydroelectric power. This mountainous region has little land available for agriculture.

Most of the Cordillera’s 4 million people live in the major cities located in the southern areas of British Columbia. Vancouver, with a metropolitan region population in 2005 of 2,208,300, is the largest urban area followed by the capital Victoria (334,700).