Understanding the interaction of clay minerals with bitumen in the oil sands is of great interest in developing water-free or water-reduced bitumen extraction processes. Previous work by Kaminsky et al. has shown, by x-ray diffraction, that there is a difference in clay minerals that partition to the froth stream versus the clays that remain in the middlings. However, x-ray diffraction analysis was insufficient in determining why the different minerals partitioned the way they did. This work examines the clay minerals in each stream by high resolution transmission electron microscopy, combined with energy dispersive x-ray analysis, to examine the characteristic chemical and morphological differences in the clay particles in each stream.