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The Wopmay orogen is a Paleoproterozoic orogenic belt formed in part by the accretion of Hottah terrane, an east-facing continental magmatic arc, to the western margin of the Archean Slave craton at ca. 1.88 Ga. The arc-continent collision was responsible for the Calderian orogeny. Just prior to the collision, arc volcanism of the Hottah terrane had migrated trenchward and changed in composition from an aphyric calc-alkaline to a bimodal tholeiitic suite. The change in magmatism, along with subsidence and consequent high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism of rocks on the upper plate, is attributed to extension and asthenospheric upwelling during rollback of the lower plate. The upwelling led to regional heating of the crust, melting, and generation of the metaluminous to peraluminous Hepburn intrusive suite within the arc just prior to accretion of Hottah terrane onto the Slave craton. During the collision, a 200-km-long, orogen-parallel swarm of mafi c sills was intruded into the lower plate and trench-fill sediments at the passive-margin shelf-slope break. The mafi c magmatism may have been induced by slab breakoff. The Calderian orogeny provides an excellent example of the magmatic history of an arc-continent collision.The Calderian orogeny was short-lived. Within a few million years, an east-dipping subduction zone formed outboard of the accreted terrane, creating volcanic rocks that were erupted atop the eroded Hottah-Slave collision zone. The short duration of the Calderian orogeny seems typical of arc-continent collisions, perhaps because the attenuated arc crust, coupled with the extended crust of the lower plate, never generates severely overthickened crust. Rise of asthenospheric mantle due to slab breakoff generates rapid uplift, erosion, and collapse of the mountains built during collision.

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