The Canoe River map area is predominantly underlain by a undifferentiated sequence of Hadrynian metasedimentary strata, belonging to the Windermere Supergroup (Miette, Horsethief Creek and Kaza groups) and their basement gneisses. Horsethief Creek Group strata in the Canoe River area are locally sufficiently pelitic to produce abundant garnet and aluminosilicate minerals when subjected to high-grade regional metamorphism (Open File 1988-26).

Detailed mapping in Wells Gray Provincial Park has outlined a complex, polyphase geologic history with four deformational and two metamorphic episodes. Regional metamorphic assemblages rapidly increase from lower greenschist, in the Braithwaite Creek area, to upper amphibolite facies at the margin of the Shuswap Metamorphic Complex, immediately west of the Azure Lake showing (Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 14, No. 7, pp. 1630-1635).

In the Cariboo Mountains, north of Azure Lake, strata, which most likely correlate with the lower Kaza or Horsethief Creek groups, contain abundant locally kyanite-sillimanite-staurolite-garnet- biotite and/or muscovite-bearing pelite. Other lithologies probably correlative with the lower Kaza Group include quartzite, calc- silicate, diamictite and conglomerate. The lower carbonate unit of the lower Kaza Group consists of phyllite quartzofeldspathic grit and marble (Geological Survey of Canada Open File 2324). Pelites locally contain 2 to 15 per cent garnet, 0 to 15 per cent coarse kyanite porphyroblasts and traces to 15 per cent sillimanite, predominantly in the form of fibrolite (Pigage, 1978).