A symposium entitled -~~~l~~i~~l wansect: northwestern in producing succinct yet data-rich papers. This special issue, Canadian was convened by Robert Anderson and Contributions to the geology and geophysics of northwestern G~~~~~ ~~h~~l~ at the ~~~l~~i~~l ~~~~~i~~i~~ of canada - British Columbia and southeastern Alaska, is the result. Mineralogical Association of Canada (GAC-MAC) Annual General Meeting held in Vancouver in May 1990. An impetus for the symposium was the growing geological and geophysical database for the northwest Cordillera. The mature state of many of the geological and geophysical research projects being carried out by Canadian and American university and federal and provincial geological survey groups was another important catalyst. The symposium proved an excellent opportunity to bring researchers together and review the state-of-the-art concerning the geology and geophysics of the Insular, Coast, and Intermontane belts of northwestern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. As well, a collection of papers reviewing the latest advances in the geology and geophysics of the northwest Cordillera seemed long overdue. Not since publication of Special Volume 8, Tectonic history and mineral deposits of the western Cordillera, by the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in 1966 has there been a collection of topical papers by an international group of geoscientists encompassing recent geological mapping, geophysical, and geochemical results that contribute to a revised tectonic framework for the northwestern Cordillera. From the beginning, symposium participants and John Clague, editor of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (CJES), were enthusiastic about publication of the symposium proceedings in a special issue of CJES. Papers by H. Gabrielse and C. A. Evenchick, part of the GAC-MAC special session 20 Sedimentary and structural evolution of Cordilleran interior basins, were solicited as well. The issue complements rather than supersedes the eagerly awaited Cordilleran Decade of North American Geology (DNAG) volumes (e.g., Gabrielse and Yorath, in press; Plaflcer and Berg, in press) in providing a synopsis of new data and ideas ensuing from post-DNAG research. To accommodate the anticipated number of contributions, yet not monopolize the capacity of a multidisciplinary publication such as CJES, authors were asked to limit submissions to 20 manuscript pages or less, about two-thirds the page limit normally allowed by CJES for articles. Through the judicious use of well-crafted figures, tables, and data held separately in the Depository of Unpublished Data, Canadian Institute for Scien