by Rolf Ludvigsen and Brian Chatterton

Table of Contents

In a 1938 speech to the House of Commons, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King commented that, "if some countries have too much history, we have too much geography". The notion that Canada possesses a surfeit of territory but skimpy and rather leaden history is occasionally echoed by glib commentators who, like Mackenzie King, understand little about the real scope of history. Canada's historical clock did not start with the landfall of the French, English, Basque or Portuguese five centuries ago, nor with the Norse visitors ten centuries ago, not even when the first hunter gatherers entered the Americas some 200 centuries before that. According to evidence from the tortured rocks of the Canadian Shield, it started ticking billions of years ago. Flanking the Shield are layers of sedimentary rocks that enclose rich and varied fossils. These fossils allow paleontologists to assemble historical narratives of physical and biological events in different Canadian geological regions over the past half billion years. Far from being abbreviated or diminished, if earth history and life history are factored in (as they must), Canada's history emerges as richly textured and unimaginably vast -- and anything but dull!

These accounts, stories and anecdotes about the people who collected or studied specific Canadian fossils are shortened from a book manuscript that will soon be submitted for publication under the title "Past lives: Chronicles of Canadian paleontology".

If you have any questions or comments concerning the content of this Web site, please contact the authors (Rolf Ludvigsen and Brian Chatterton).