folded rocks along the continental margin. The Insular Belt then welded onto the continental margin by magma that eventually cooled to create a large mass of igneous rock, creating a new continental margin. This large mass of igneous rock is the largest granite outcropping in North America. The Farallon Plate continued to subduct under the new continental margin of Western Canada after the Insular Plate and Insular Islands collided with the former continental margin, supporting a new chain of volcanoes on the mainland of Western Canada called the Coast Range Arc about 100 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous epoch. Magma ascending from the Farallon Plate under the new continental margin burned their way upward through the newly accreted Insular Belt, injecting huge quantities of granite into older igneous rocks of the Insular Belt. At the surface, new volcanoes were built along the continental margin. The basement of this arc was likely Early Cretaceous and Late Jurassic age intrusions from the Insular Islands. One of the major aspects that changed early during the Coast Range Arc was the status of the northern end of the Farallon Plate, a portion now known as the Kula Plate. About 85 million years ago, the Kula Plate broke off from the Farallon Plate to form an area of seafloor spreading called the Kula-Farallon Ridge. This change apparently had some important ramifications for regional geologic evolution. When this change was completed, Coast Range Arc volcanism returned and sections of the arc were uplifted considerably in latest Cretaceous time. This started a period of mountain building that affected much of western North America called the Laramide orogeny. In particular a large area of dextral transpression and southwest-directed thrust faulting was active from 75 to 66 million years ago. Much of the record of this deformation has been overridden by Tertiary age structures and the zone of Cretaceous dextral thrust faulting appears to have been widespread. It was also during this period when massive amounts of molten granite intruded highly deformed ocean rocks and assorted fragments from pre-existing island arcs, largely remnants of the Bridge River Ocean. This molten granite burned the old oceanic sediments into a glittering medium-grade metamorphic rock called schist. The older intrusions of the Coast Range Arc were then deformed under the heat and pressure of later intrusions, turning them into layered metamorphic rock known as gneiss. In some places, mixtures of