Great Bear Lake (Slavey: Sahtú, French: Grand lac de l'Ours) is the largest lake entirely within Canada (Lake Superior and Lake Huron straddling the Canada-US border are larger), the fourth largest in North America, and the seventh largest in the world. The lake is in the Northwest Territories and is situated on the Arctic Circle between 65 and 67 degrees of northern latitude and between 118 and 123 degrees western longitude, 186 m (610 ft) above sea level. The name is believed to have originated with the First Nations living along the northern shores of the lake, who referred to themselves by Chipewyan words meaning “grizzly bear water people.” Grizzly Bear Mountain on the shore of the Lake comes from the Chipewyan, meaning, literally “bear large hill.”
Read more about Great Bear Lake: Geography, Prehistoric Geology, Human Usage, History, Ice Road, Climate
Famous quotes containing the words bear and/or lake:
“My lord, adjudge my strength, and set me where
I bear a little more than I can bear.”
—Elinor Wylie (18851928)
“What a wilderness walk for a man to take alone! None of your half-mile swamps, none of your mile-wide woods merely, as on the skirts of our towns, without hotels, only a dark mountain or a lake for guide-board and station, over ground much of it impassable in summer!”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)