The Canadian Rockies comprise the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains range. The southern end in Alberta and British Columbia borders Idaho and Montana of the USA. The northern end is at the Liard Plain in British Columbia.

Contrary to popular misconception, the Rockies do not extend into the Yukon or Alaska, or into central British Columbia. North of the Liard River, the Mackenzie Mountains, which are not part of the Rockies, form a portion of the border between the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. The mountain ranges to the west of the Rocky Mountain Trench in southern British Columbia are called the Columbia Mountains and are not considered to be part of the Rockies.

Geology

The Canadian Rockies are the easternmost part of the Canadian Cordillera, the collective name for the mountains of Western Canada. They form part of the American Cordillera, an essentially continuous sequence of mountain ranges that runs all the way from Alaska to the very tip of South America. The Cordillera in turn are the eastern part of the Pacific Ring of Fire that runs all the way around the Pacific Ocean.

The Canadian Rockies are bounded on the east by the Canadian Prairies, on the west by the Rocky Mountain Trench , and on the north by the Liard River. The southern boundary is somewhat arbitrary since the mountain trend continues on into the United States, but could be considered to be Marias Pass in Montana, which separates them from the geologically different American Rockies.

The Canadian Rockies are distinct from the American Rockies in that they are older mountains, they were primarily formed by overthrusting whereas the American Rockies were primarily formed by uplifting, and they are almost exclusively sedimentary rock, whereas the American Rockies are cored with granite. Their physical appearance is different because the Canadian Rockies have been very heavily glaciated, resulting in sharply pointed mountains separated by wide, U-shaped valleys gouged by glaciers, whereas the American Rockies are more rounded with river-carved V-shaped valleys between them.

Parks

Five national parks are located within the Canadian Rockies, four of which interlock and make up the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage site. These four parks are Banff, Jasper, Kootenay and Yoho. The national park not included in the World Heritage Site is Waterton, which does not interlock with the others (it lies farther south, along the international boundary). The World Heritage site also includes three British Columbia provincial parks that adjoin the four national parks: Hamber, Mount Assiniboine and Mount Robson. Together, all these national and provincial parks were declared a single UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 for the unique mountain landscapes found there, comprising peaks, glaciers, lakes, waterfalls, canyons and limestone caves as well as fossils (e.g. the Burgess Shale, once a World Heritage Site in its own right, is now part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site). Numerous other provincial parks are located in the Canadian Rockies.