Boats of the Mackenzie River watershed carrier business in 1947. The last steam-propelled sternwheelers, the "S.S. Distributor" and "S.S. Mackenzie" were retired around the same time. In later years, with the construction of the Mackenzie Highway from Alberta to Great Slave Lake, the importance of the Athabasca-Slave River route dwindled and NTCL operations were based from shipyards in Hay River after 1959. NTCL became the primary water operator in the Mackenzie River watershed with the purchase of Hudson's Bay Company's fleet and equipment in 1958, and the total buyout of Yellowknife Transportation Company in 1965 including its fleet of diesel tug boats. Other small commercial operators
Mackenzie River project has not yet been reached. A potential US$1 billion, 1350 MW hydro plant on the Slave River was canceled in 2010 after an agreement could not be reached with First Nations people in the area to be flooded by the reservoir. Mackenzie River The Mackenzie River (Slavey language: Deh-Cho , "big river" or Inuvialuktun: Kuukpak , "great river"; ) is the longest river system in Canada, and has the second largest drainage basin of any North American river after the Mississippi River. The Mackenzie River flows through a vast, thinly populated region of forest and tundra entirely within the