Canada’s largest wholly domestic lake hides uranium shores
Great Bear Lake—Sahtú—is the biggest lake entirely inside Canada, fourth-largest in North America and eighth on Earth. Ice seals it from late November into summer, yet John Franklin in 1828 watched a white cloth stay visible past fifteen fathoms.
Surface area reaches 31,153 km² with 2,234 km³ of water, a maximum depth of 446 m and a mean of 71.7 m, along 2,719 km of shore draining 114,717 km². The Chipewyan word satudene, grizzly-bear-water people, names the Sahtu Dene, and two peninsulas, Sahoyue (Grizzly Bear Mountain) and Edacho (Scented Grass Hills), form a national historic site. The Smith, Dease, McTavish, McVicar, and Keith arms indent the outline, fed by the Whitefish, Dease, Sloan, and other rivers.
The lake sits where the Kazan Uplands of the Canadian Shield meet the Interior Plains, in valleys once flooded by glacial Lake McConnell. Délı̨nę stands on Keith Arm where the Great Bear River leaves for the Mackenzie, with an ice crossing to the winter road. On 5 March 2016, days after the weight limit rose to 40,000 kg, a tank truck broke partway through the ice about 3 km from town, near the community’s water intake.
Gilbert LaBine’s 1930 uranium find created the Eldorado pitchblende camp at Port Radium on the east shore. In 1995 an angler landed a 32.65 kg lake trout, a world record on rod and line. A rare moss, Pseudoditrichum mirabile, the only species in its family, is known only from a small stretch of the Sloan River nearby.
For the Délı̨nę people the lake anchors identity, law, and culture, so protecting it is paramount. The elder ɂehtsǝ́o Erǝ́ya made more than 30 prophecies that many believe have come true, and his teachings still shape how the community thinks about its water.
Source: Great Bear Lake
