Great Bear Lake

Great Bear Lake (English: Grand lac de l'Ours; French: Slavey Sahtú) is the largest lake in the Northwest Territories area of Canada, the fourth largest lake in North America, and thus the largest lake in North America outside the Great Lakes region. It is located in the Déline District of the Sahtu Region.

The lake stretches on both sides of the Arctic Circle; its water surface is at an altitude of 156 metres. It has a surface area of 31,153 km² and a total volume of 2236 km³. The average depth is 72 m; at the deepest point in the eastern part (west of Port Radium) the lake is 446 m deep. This means that the bottom of the lake is 290 m below sea level. Thus, this is a cryptodepression.

The lake is widely branched and can be divided into several so-called arms. These are, in the northern part, the Smith arm, with the Whitefish River as a tributary, and east of it the Dease arm. The main part of the lake consists of the McTavish arm, which extends between the peninsulas of Ehdacho (on the west) and Sahoyúé (on the south), and Port Radium on the east. The two southern arms are McVicar Arm to the southeast and Keith Arm, with the Great Bear River (Sahtúdé) as its outlet, which flows into the Mackenzie River. The arms of the lake were named after members of the Hudson's Bay Company who had accompanied John Franklin's Arctic expeditions from 1819 to 1822, namely Peter Warren Dease (1788-1863), Robert McVicar, John McTavish, Edward Smith, and George and James Keith.

The Sahtú people, who belong to the Dene group, are named after the lake. The only major settlement on Great Bear Lake is Déline on the western shore of the lake. Port Radium, located to the east, was important in the 20th century as a transshipment port for the nearby Eldorado and Echo Bay uranium and silver mines. Portions of the uranium mined were used during World War II for the Manhattan Project, the construction of the first atomic bombs. However, after mining operations ceased in 1982, the settlement was abandoned. To the northeast of the lake, the Fort Confidence fur-trading post was built in 1837, but had already been abandoned around the turn of the century and had fallen victim to fire by 1911.

The peninsulas of Ehdacho and Sahoyúé, which jut into the lake, were declared National Historic Sites of Canada on September 22, 1997.

The lake is located in the Tsá Tué Biosphere Reserve, established in 2016.

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