The St. Lawrence valley system (including the St. Lawrence, Ottawa, and Champlain valleys, and the St. Lawrence or Cabot trough) is coextensive with a well-defined pattern of seismic activity. The valley system is in a region of general updoming, normal faulting, and alkaline igneous activity of a distinctive type. The main phase of tectonic activity probably dates back to Mesozoic time. The above and other evidence presented in this paper indicate the existence of a major rift valley system that may be called the St. Lawrence rift system.The Rough Creek – Kentucky River fault zone, and the normal fault zones in Texas and Oklahoma, and the Lake Superior fault zone probably represent extensions of the St. Lawrence rift system. However, current seismicity indicates that the present tectonic activity is along a straight zone running through lakes Ontario and Erie into the Mississippi embayment. The St. Lawrence rift system may also be connected with the mid-Atlantic rift, in the region of the Azores plateau.The rift hypothesis presented may be useful as a regional guide in the search for niobium-bearing alkaline complexes and diamond-bearing kimberlites.Crustal tension in the St. Lawrence region may be genetically related to the opening of the Atlantic basin as postulated in the hypothesis of continental drift.

U–Pb baddeleyite and zircon ages for three diabase dykes from widely spaced localities within the Grenville dyke swarm indicate a single age of emplacement at [Formula: see text] Ma. The 700 km long Grenville dyke swarm, located in the southeastern part of the Canadian Shield, was emplaced syntectonically with the development of the Ottawa graben. This graben may represent a plume-generated lapetan failed arm that developed at the onset of the breakup of Laurentia. Other precisely dated lapetan rift-related units, such as the Callander Alkaline Complex and the Tibbit Hill Formation volcanic rocks, indicate a protracted 36 Ma period of rifting and magmatism prior to volcanism along this segment of the lapetan margin. The age of the Grenville dykes is the youngest in a progression of precisely dated mafic magmatic events from the 723 Ma Franklin dykes and sills to the 615 Ma Long Range dykes, along the northern and northeastern margins of Laurentia, respectively. Thus, the age for these dykes represents a key time marker for continental breakup that preceded the formation of the Iapetus ocean.

Metafelsites in Waterloo area, Quebec, represent the only known silicic volcanic rocks in the predominantly basaltic Tibbit Hill Formation. Low-grade metamorphism accompanied by hydration and albitization has converted the felsic volcanic rocks mainly to muscovite–quartz–albite schists. The volcanic parent of these metafelsites was formed partly as lava flows and partly as tuffs. The principal compositional type was a comendite. A component of intermediate rocks is also present but its extent is undetermined and probably minor. U–Pb zircon studies of the metafelsites have yielded a reliable age of [Formula: see text]. This Early Cambrian age is probably representative of the age of the Tibbit Hill Formation as a whole.The Tibbit Hill Formation accumulated at one of the clearest examples of a RRR (rift–rift–rift) triple junction–the Sutton Mountains triple junction–of the continental rift system formed as a prelude to the opening of the Iapetus Ocean. Its volcanic rocks are products of the youngest major episode of rift-related volcanism known from the continental margin of Laurentia. The volcanic event may have occurred as a harbinger of the onset of sea-floor spreading at the Sutton Mountains triple junction.

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