How Vancouver Island was Made

How Our Island Was Made

Our island is really just the top of some mountains. There are all of these mountain ranges that run north and south along our side of America. See on the map if it is showing now. One of the mountain ranges is partly covered by the ocean. This is called the Insular Range. Insular just means islands and so it is the tops of these mountains that make up all the islands you see along the coast.

Why We Have So Many Mountains

Scientists that study the earth are called geologists. Geologists think they know why we have so many mountains. They think that the center of the earth is melted rock and that there are hard plates of the earth's crust floating and moving around on it. In some places those plates bump into each other. This is what they think is happening on the west coast of America. This makes two kinds of mountains.

Folded Mountains

When two plates meet they push into each other and the weaker one begins to fold and bend. The heavier one begins to slide under the lighter one.It looks a bit like this.

When the heavy plate goes under, it makes the plate on top get folds and wrinkles. You can try this by sliding a hard book under the edge of a table cloth or the blanket on your bed. See how the softer thing makes folds? Well if those folds are softer rock and very big, then you get mountains. When you pushed your book under, did you notice since your push was all from one side, the wrinkles or folds in the cloth all went one way....well that is what happened here. The push is like this -----> against the coast so the wrinkles or mountains all go from north to south.

Volcanoes

The plate that is trying to get under the other one must go deeper and deeper into the earth and as it does that it starts to get hot and melt. You can guess what happens then! A volcano! Again see the pictures.

Another kind of mountain!

Ice

About 18,000 years ago there was an Ice Age and big glaciers covered most of this continent. We still have a glacier near where I live. Here it is. It is called the Comox Glacier. It looks like this even on our hot summer days.

Glaciers scrape at the sides of the mountains and make them very steep and jagged like this.

We have a lot of sharp jagged mountains like this on our island now that most of the glaciers are melted.

Do you remember that I explained that we live near a place where one part of the earth's crust is pushing under another part like this:

Well you must remember these are great hunks of rock not nice smooth dinner plates. They are rough. That means sometimes they get stuck. They just keep pushing together and the mountains bulge up a bit till suddenly they get unstuck....When you push a big piece of furniture and it finally moves, it is a jerky move, right? Well that is what happens when a plate that has been stuck suddenly moves. All the earth on top of it shakes...We call it an earthquake.

Have you head of big earthquakes knocking down buildings? Well that is not all they knock down. On Vancouver Island we do not have many big buildings but we have some big mountains. Earthquakes have knocked down pieces of our mountains sometimes. This is Mt. Colonel Foster. See the funny looking section on the right hand side. That is a landslide. A whole hunk of the mountain got shaken loose and fell down in a heep of rubble.

Water

Did you know that water can wear away stone and rock? It happens very slowly but in time where the waves have come crashing in against the side of a mountain the bits of rock break off and finally a cliff is formed. Some rocks are harder than others. If there is a softer section the waves will wash that part away faster and so you might get a cave or funny looking little bowls in the rock. In this picture the rocky shore looks a bit like the pictures you see of the moon up close. See the cave starting to form?

More on Geological Formation
Earth Quake Activity in the B.C. South West