Mackenzie River east into the Churchill River. The eastern portion of the Mackenzie basin is dominated by vast reaches of lake-studded boreal forest and includes many of the largest lakes in North America. By both volume and surface area, Great Bear Lake is the biggest in the watershed and third largest on the continent, with a surface area of and a volume of . Great Slave Lake is slightly smaller, with an area of and containing of water, although it is significantly deeper than Great Bear. The third major lake, Athabasca, is less than a third that size with an area of
Steamboats of the Peace River Steamboats of the Peace River The Peace River, which flows from the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia to the Peace–Athabasca Delta and Lake Athabasca in Alberta, was navigable by late nineteenth and early twentieth century steamboats from the Rocky Mountain Falls at Hudson's Hope to Fort Vermilion, where there was another set of rapids, then via the lower Peace from Vermilion to Lake Athabasca. The Peace is part of the Mackenzie Basin, a larger river complex which includes the Athabasca, Slave, and Mackenzie Rivers. The Athabasca had large rapids too at Grande Rapids and Fort Smith; in this way the