Great Bear Lake
The largest lake lying entirely within Canada
Straddling the Arctic Circle in Canada's Northwest Territories lies Great Bear Lake, the largest lake contained entirely within Canada and the fourth largest in North America. Cold, deep, and frozen for much of the year, it sprawls across the subarctic in an irregular, many-armed shape strewn with islands. Its waters are so clear and so little disturbed that they support some of the finest lake-trout fishing on the continent, drawing anglers to a place where the human population is measured in the dozens and the nearest road is a long way off.
The lake covers about 31,300 square kilometres and plunges to a maximum depth of 413 metres, sitting some 156 metres above sea level on the edge of the Canadian Shield. Ice locks its surface for eight months of the year, and even in summer the water stays frigid, which slows biological productivity and keeps the lake oligotrophic — nutrient-poor, but crystalline. Its five great arms radiate from a central basin, and the McTavish Arm holds the deepest water. The lake drains westward through the Great Bear River to the Mackenzie and on to the Arctic Ocean.
The Sahtu Dene people, whose name for themselves means people of the bear lake, have lived along its shores for generations and co-manage the surrounding lands today. In the 1930s the mining town of Port Radium on its eastern shore produced radium and later uranium — some of it bound, controversially, for the Manhattan Project — leaving an environmental legacy the community has worked to address. Now the lake is recognised as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, a vast and pristine expanse of subarctic wilderness.