Date Published:
July 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Fort Chipewyan

Fort Chipewyan, a trading-post of the North West Company built in 1788 by Roderick McKenzie on the south shore of lake Athabaska, about eight miles east of the mouth of Athabaska river, on a rocky point projecting into the lake. It was the centre of the Athabaska trade, and was styled "the Emporium of the North". From this post Sir Alexander Mackenzie set out on his epoch-making journeys to the Arctic and Pacific oceans. In 1804 this post was abandoned, and a new fort was erected by the North West Company on a rocky point on the north shore of lake Athabaska. This post, which became the most important post of the North West Company in the far north, was taken over by the Hudson's Bay Company at the time of the union of 1821, and has continued in operation to the present.

Source  : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., pp. 366-367.