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Cover illustration This intriguing pair of specimens from the Dome mine at Timmins, Ontario clearly shows the marks where the steel drill bit cut into the gold and quartz. The drill bit became plugged with gold, making it inoperable. Dome Mines Ltd. presented these to the Royal Ontario Museum in 1958. Photograph by Calvin Nicholls.

It has been the custom of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) to periodically publish a summary account of the geology and economic mineral deposits of Canada. Such ‘Geology and Economic Minerals of Canada’ volumes were published in 1909, 1926, 1946, 1957, and 1970. During the 1980s, in lieu of a sixth edition, the GSC embarked on the production of a series of more comprehensive ‘Geology of Canada’ volumes as part of the Geological Society of America (GSA) Decade of North American Geology (DNAG) series. Much of the material for this review of the geology and economic minerals of Superior Province was prepared as part of the DNAG initiative but, due to revised operational requirements, the integration of the geological and metallogenic aspects arose much later. In this integrated review, we place particular emphasis on advances that have taken place in the 25 years since the last summaries of this kind (Stockwell et al., 1970; Lang et al., 1970; Goodwin, 1972). The Archean Superior Craton forms the core of the North American continent (Fig. 2.1) and is surrounded and truncated on all sides by Proterozoic orogens, the collisional zones along which the elements of the Precambrian Canadian Shield were amalgamated (Hoffman, 1988, 1989). The Superior Province (Fig. 2.2) is the 2 × 106 km2 region of this craton which is free of significant post-Archean cover rocks and deformation. The rocks of Superior Province are of mainly Meso- and Neoarchean age and have been significantly affected by post-Archean deformation only along