The East Lake Athabasca region, along the Snowbird tectonic zone in the western Canadian Shield, exposes an enormous tract (> 20,000 km2) of granulite facies rocks (8 to > 20 kbar, > 750 °C) that preserve a complex record of the maturation, stabilization and reactivation of continental lithosphere. The exhumed deep crustal base of this craton provides a direct view of rock types and structures commonly imaged by seismic methods beneath continents, and allows evaluation of the role of processes such as lower crustal flow speculated to occur in the deep levels of modern orogens. The East Lake Athabasca region is composed of several disparate high-grade domains that preserve multiple granulite facies metamorphic events and final exhumation. U-Pb ID-TIMS geochronology documents two episodes of metamorphic zircon growth at ca. 2.55 Ga and 1.9 Ga, likely correlative with two distinct > 10 kbar, > 750 °C granulite facies assemblages preserved in the rocks, and implying deep crustal residence within a stable lithosphere for 650 m.y. The second metamorphic event at ca. 1.9 Ga has been documented along 800 km of strike length and requires a significant event to disrupt this stabilized craton. Spectacular manifestations of this event include the emplacement and migmatization of a swarm of mafic dikes at 1896.7 ± 0.8 Ma (10-12 kbar, 750-850 °C) in one domain, and eclogite facies metamorphism (> 15 kbar, ~900 °C) at 1904.0 ± 0.3 Ma in an adjacent domain. High-resolution post-1.9 Ga cooling records for these domains are reconstructed by exploiting the full temperature range from >1000 °C to <200 °C permitted by U/Pb (zircon, monazite, titanite, apatite, rutile), 40Ar/39Ar (hornblende, muscovite, biotite), and (U-Th)/He (zircon) thermochronology, and document distinct thermal histories during domain juxtaposition and unroofing. These results provide unique insight into the character, behavior and evolution of deep crust during the stabilization and reactivation of continents.