Let's follow our national motto and go to Canada's other shore, from sea to sea, "a mari usque ad mare," from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland.
Now we are looking out on the Atlantic, a still growing ocean as the North American continent is moving away from Europe.

Canada's east coast is a "passive" continental margin, which is widening, while our Pacific coast is an "active" continental margin, overriding the ocean floor.

The Atlantic Ocean still is growing, some 180 million years after it began to open, when our continent rifted away from Europe and Africa. Northward, in the North Atlantic, rifting started later. This rift, out of which the Atlantic eventually grew, broke up a former supercontinent, called Pangaea. One can say that eastern Newfoundland once was part of western Africa.

The Atlantic continental shelf is wide here, providing spawning beds on the sea floor, and deep, sediment-filled basins below. Some sediments are rich in oil and gas, and include the famous Hibernia oil field.