ABSTRACT

Minerals other than oil, gas and coal occur in abundance and variety in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. They include the industrial (or nonmetallic) and metallic minerals and together account for a significant proportion of Western Canada's wealth. By far the largest tonnage and value are the industrial minerals - a diverse array of more than twod dozon different mineral kinds. Metallic minerals are much less developed; known deposits are few and generally small, although they include the world-class Pine Point (Pb-Zn) orebody.

For the industrial minerals, most production comes from the Interior Plains region, where Phanerozoic rocks form a northeast-tapering wedge of undeformed strata. These strata include Paleozoic carbonates and evaporites that give rise to rich resources of sulphur, potash, salt, gypsum, limestone and dolomite. The Paleozoic strata are succeeded by Mesozoic and Tertiary clastic rocks that are sources for economic deposits of kaolin and structural clays, bentonite, silica sand, and constructional sands and gravels. Important production also comes from the Cordilleran region, where deformed and upthrusted basin strata in the Rocky Mountain belt expose economic deposits of limestone, magnesite, gypsum and quartzite.

For the metallic minerals, except for Pine Point, most deposits have been found in the Cordilleran region. These are mainly lead-zinc deposits of the Mississippi Valley type, few in number and widely separated; limited past production came from small localized orebodies in southeastern British Columbia. In the Interior Plains, the Pine Point lead-zinc deposit is the largest and only significant economic deposit. Some placer gold is still produced from Tertiary and recent gravels. Sedimentary iron deposits (in the Clear Hills region of Alberta) are large, but remain undeveloped

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