What is Great Bear Lake?
Answer
The largest lake entirely within Canada at 31,328 square kilometres, located in the Northwest Territories on the Arctic Circle.
Explanation
Great Bear Lake is the largest lake entirely within Canada and the eighth-largest lake in the world by surface area at 31,328 square kilometres. The lake is in the Northwest Territories and straddles the Arctic Circle. It is also the deepest lake in North America, with a maximum depth of 446 metres (deeper than the average depth of any of the Great Lakes), and the ninth-largest lake in the world by volume.
The lake's name comes from the Sahtu Dene name Sahtu, meaning 'great bear water', and the lake was the source of the Sahtu Dene Nation's traditional territory along its eastern shore. Great Bear Lake drains to the Mackenzie River via the 110-kilometre Great Bear River, which flows southwest from the lake to the Mackenzie at Tulita. Major inlets and arms of the lake include Smith Arm, McTavish Arm, Dease Arm, Keith Arm, and McVicar Arm.
The community of Deline (formerly Fort Franklin) on the southwest shore is the only permanent settlement on the lake, with a population of about 600 people, almost all Sahtu Dene. Great Bear Lake is also the namesake of the Sahtu region. The Deline Got'ine Government, established under the Deline Final Self-Government Agreement (effective September 1, 2016), is the first community-based self-government in the Northwest Territories. The lake supports an Indigenous-led conservation economy through the proposed Tsa Tue Biosphere Reserve (designated in 2016 as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the largest in North America).
Great Bear Lake was the site of the Eldorado uranium mine at Port Radium on the McTavish Arm from 1932 to 1960. The mine produced uranium and radium, including the uranium used in the Manhattan Project's atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Sahtu Dene who worked at the mine and along the transport route (the Highway of the Atom from Port Radium south to Fort McMurray, Alberta) suffered high rates of cancer in subsequent decades. The federal government issued a formal apology and announced a $6.7 million compensation package in 2019. The lake's cold deep waters support lake trout, lake whitefish, Arctic grayling, and Arctic char, and the surrounding tundra and taiga support barren-ground caribou (the Bluenose and Cape Bathurst herds), moose, wolves, and grizzly bears.
Why this matters for your test
Great Bear Lake is the largest lake entirely within Canada and the deepest in North America. Recognising the 31,328 square kilometre size and the Arctic Circle location gives candidates two specific anchors.
Source: Government of the Northwest Territories; Tsa Tue Biosphere Reserve
