Puskwaskau River Puskwaskau River The Puskwaskau River is a short river in Northern Alberta, Canada. It is a tributary of the Smoky River flowing westwards in the Peace River Country. Its waters flow through the Smoky River, Peace River, Slave River, Great Slave Lake and Mackenzie River into the Arctic Ocean. The name of the river originates from the Cree word for "short grass". The Puskwaskau Formation, a stratigraphical unit of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, was named for the river. The river originates from the Puskwaskau Lake in the Sturgeon Heights, at an elevation of , north-west from Valleyview. It flows
Mackenzie River watershed, reaching up to deep in the Mackenzie Delta. As a whole, the Mackenzie basin receives only meager to moderate rainfall, averaging over the entire basin, though mountain areas experience much higher precipitation, and areas near and north of the Arctic Circle receive much lower precipitation. The Mackenzie drainage basin is bordered by multiple major North American watersheds. Much of the western edge of the Mackenzie basin runs along the Continental Divide. The divide separates the Mackenzie watershed from that of the Yukon River, which flows to the Bering Strait; and the Fraser River and Columbia River systems, both of