Extensional stresses along the entire length of the rift system have resulted in a variety of tectonic features, including grabens, half-grabens, basins and faults.

The rift system is now inactive apart from minor adjustments that are indicated by occasional earthquakes in Baffin Bay and the Labrador Sea.

The Canadian Arctic Rift System is a branch of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that extends 4,800 km (3,000 mi) into the North American continent.

It is an incipient structure that diminishes in degree of development northwestward, bifurcates at the head of Baffin Bay and disappears into the Arctic Archipelago.

[4] The Boreal Rifting Episode began in the Late Devonian and emanated southeastward from the Canada Basin into the North American continent.

It caused uplift of the Pearya Geanticline and Sverdrup Rim, as well as crustal extension that led to thinning and subsidence of the regional lithosphere.

[4][5] The rifting extended only into the area that would be occupied by the future central Queen Elizabeth Islands and was aborted there due to interfering structural trends.

[5][4] Crustal stretching began at the south end of the rift system 130 million years ago, during which time supercontinent Laurasia was in the process of breaking apart.

[6] Rifting began from the Atlantic Ocean then propagated northwest where the Labrador Sea started opening in the Late Cretaceous.

This northward movement gave rise to compressive forces between northern Greenland and the Arctic Archipelago, setting the stage for the Eurekan orogeny.

Seafloor spreading reached the northern Labrador Sea 60–40 million years ago and Greenland moved simultaneously past Ellesmere Island along the Nares Strait.

[6][10] By this time spreading within Baffin Bay and the Labrador Sea had slowed and became oblique, eventually ceasing between 45 and 36 million years ago.

Several earthquakes occur but their patterns indicate that tectonic forces characteristic of plate margins are not acting directly within the Canadian Arctic today.

[4] The present seismic activity may be mainly an expression of readjustment of existing rift structures to a regional stress field associated with post-glacial rebound.

In spite of its size, the 1933 Baffin Bay earthquake did not result in any damage due to its offshore location combined with the sparse population of the adjacent onshore areas.

[14] A linear belt of medium-amplitude earthquakes known as the Labrador Sea Seismic Zone is coincident with the extinct spreading axis of the Mid-Labrador Ridge.

[16] The Ungava Fault Zone is a major tectonic feature of Davis Strait separating the failed Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay spreading centres.

Bathymetric data suggest it is a possible graben structure with steep, linear, north–south margins that formed during the Eurekan Rifting Episode.

The faults forming the supposed graben appear to have been guided in part by the structure of the Cornwallis Fold Belt, but probably were controlled ultimately by trends in the Precambrian crystalline basement.

[33] It was established during Early Cretaceous rifting and lies within a fault zone delimiting the northern end of the Labrador Sea.

These structures formed intermittently from late Proterozoic to early Tertiary time, with the latest period of reactivation having taken place during the Eurekan Rifting Episode.

[22][37] Several episodes of intrusive and extrusive activity took place from the Paleozoic to Cenozoic with the emplacement of dikes, sills, lava flows and pyroclastic rocks.

It consists of pyroclastic deposits, thin lava flows, flood basalts and central volcanoes, as well as hypabyssal sills and dikes.

[40] A central volcano formed on Illorsuit Island with the emplacement of the Sarqâta qáqâ gabbro-granophyre intrusion roughly 56 million years ago.

With a length of over 1,100 km (680 mi), Parry Channel connects Baffin Bay in the east with Beaufort Sea in the west.

Of these, Admiralty Inlet penetrates deep into the northwestern part of Baffin Island from the south side of Lancaster Sound.

[60] Davis Strait is a narrow and relatively shallow area connecting Baffin Bay in the north with the Labrador Sea in the south.

This aquatic sill is a submarine ridge 350 to 550 m (1,150 to 1,800 ft) below sea level extending from Baffin Island in the west to Greenland in the east.

[57] The current flows north along the coast of West Greenland, steadily losing volume through low-velocity westward branching as water is fed into the anticyclonic circulatory system of the Labrador Sea.

[42] It flows down the west side of the Labrador Sea then back into the North Atlantic Ocean where it continues southward along the east coast of Newfoundland and completely floods the northeastern part of the Grand Banks.