the
Mackenzie
River


Like a gentle giant, Deh Cho, the great Mackenzie River, rules serenely over the waterways of the great northwest. While smaller rivers splash , foam and twist through the rugged land, Canada's longest river flows patiently, steadily, solemnly north. Beginning at the headwaters of the Peace and Athabasca, gathering and taming the spirited waters of the Slave, the Liard, the Nahanni and the Arctic Red, and ending at the Arctic Ocean, the Mackenzie river system totals almost 4,200 kilometres. At Great Slave Lake, it forges a wide, 1,738 kilometre watercourse of its own, heading "down north" across the Arctic Circle to the Beaufort Sea. Along the way, it deposits its heavy burden of sand and silt into the channels, lakes and sandbars of the vast Mackenzie Delta. Cold Arctic air and millions of migrating birds swoop down its valley to the south, while a ribbon of boreal and taiga forest, diminishing in size but never completely disappearing, follows its warm, shallow waters to the north. Though its watershed, 1.8 million square kilometres in size, drains one-fifth of the country of Canada, few Canadians have ever seen the Mackenzie. Even in the 21st century, as its inhabitants - Dene, Métis, Inuvialuit and non-aboriginal alike -contemplate their river's future, the Mackenzie remains one of the most undeveloped, sparsely populated, and endlessly intriguing river valleys in the nation.