What is the Saskatchewan River system?

The Saskatchewan River system is the major river system of the central prairie provinces, draining about 405,000 square kilometres from the Rocky Mountains east to Lake Winnipeg. The system has two principal branches that join at The Forks (Saskatchewan River Forks) east of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan: the North Saskatchewan River and the South Saskatchewan River. The combined Saskatchewan River flows about 547 kilometres from the Forks east to Cedar Lake and Lake Winnipeg.

The North Saskatchewan River rises from the Saskatchewan Glacier on the Columbia Icefield in Banff National Park and flows about 1,287 kilometres east through Edmonton, North Battleford, and Prince Albert to the Forks. The South Saskatchewan River rises from the Bow and Oldman Rivers in southern Alberta (which themselves rise in the Rockies) and flows about 1,392 kilometres east through Medicine Hat, Saskatoon, and Outlook to the Forks. Both rivers are fed by glacial meltwater from the Rockies, and their flow is increasingly affected by glacial retreat caused by climate change.

The Saskatchewan River system was the major route for the canoe-borne fur trade across the prairies from the 1670s to the 1860s. Hudson's Bay Company posts at Fort Edmonton, Fort Carlton, Cumberland House (1774, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in Saskatchewan), and The Pas anchored the trade. The rivers and the parallel Red River Cart Trail were the main transportation routes until the Canadian Pacific Railway main line and Canadian Northern Railway lines crossed the prairies in the 1880s and 1890s. Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan River near the Forks served as the principal administrative centre of the Northwest until the 1820s.

The Saskatchewan River system supports significant hydroelectric generation. SaskPower's Coteau Creek, Nipawin, and EB Campbell stations on the Saskatchewan River provide much of Saskatchewan's renewable electricity. Manitoba Hydro's Grand Rapids station at the river's mouth provides additional capacity. The Gardiner Dam on the South Saskatchewan River, completed in 1967, created Lake Diefenbaker (the largest reservoir in southern Saskatchewan) for irrigation, hydroelectricity, and recreation. The river system is the principal source of irrigation water for southern Alberta and Saskatchewan agriculture, with about 70 per cent of Canadian irrigated land in the Saskatchewan-Alberta basin. Indigenous fisheries, treaty rights to the river, and concerns about water quantity under climate change are continuing themes.