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30-1047: It originates on the northern fringes of Peace River Country in northern Alberta , south of the Chinchaga Wildland Park , in the Halverson Ridge of the Clear Hills , then flows westwards into British Columbia . It empties into the Beatton River , a tributary of the Peace River , at an elevation of 480 meters (1,570 ft). Tributaries include the Square Creek, Betts Creek and Mearon Creek in Alberta; Adskwatim Creek, Osborn River, La Guarde Creek, and Siphon Creek in British Columbia. The Indigenous community of Doig River

60-675: A Triassic age geological unit of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin was named for the river. This article related to a river in Alberta , Canada is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to a river in British Columbia , Canada is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Peace River Country The Peace River Country (or Peace Country ; French : Région de la Rivière-de-la-paix )

90-646: A daughter. Her grandfather, Captain John Mackenzie of Castle Leod (great-grandson of George Mackenzie, 2nd Earl of Seaforth ), purchased the estate of Avoch with money left to him by his first cousin and brother-in-law, Admiral George Geddes Mackenzie. Lady Mackenzie's father was a first cousin of the father of George Simpson , Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company . The Mackenzies lived alternately in Avoch and London. He died in 1820 of Bright's disease , at about

120-466: A desire to reach the open ocean, but was stopped by the hostility of the Heiltsuk people . Hemmed in by Heiltsuk war canoes, he wrote a message on a rock near the water's edge of Dean Channel , using a reddish paint made of vermilion and bear grease, and turned back east. The inscription read: "Alex MacKenzie / from Canada / by land / 22 July 1793" (at the time the name Canada was an informal term for

150-518: A dog simply referred to as "our dog", Mackenzie left Fort Chipewyan on 10 October 1792, and travelled via the Pine River to the Peace River . From there he travelled to a fork on the Peace River arriving 1 November where he and his cohorts built a fortification that they resided in over the winter. This later became known as Fort Fork . Mackenzie left Fort Fork on 9 May 1793, following

180-650: A merchant and held the tack of Melbost ; his grandfather being a younger brother of Murdoch Mackenzie, 6th Laird of Fairburn. Educated at the same school as Colin Mackenzie , the army officer and first Surveyor General of India , he sailed to New York City with his father to join an uncle, John Mackenzie, in 1774, after his mother died in Scotland. In 1776, during the American War of Independence , his father and uncle resumed their military duties and joined

210-482: Is also done in the area. In 2006, the region accounted for 14.4% of Canada's total bison-producing herd. Other industries include oil and gas extraction and forestry . Lumber, oriented strand board , and pulp are produced in many forestry mills throughout the region. Peace Country is crossed by the southern leg of the Alaska Highway , the western extremity of Alberta Highway 43 and the southern portion of

240-615: Is an aspen parkland region centring on the Peace River in Canada . It extends from northwestern Alberta to the Rocky Mountains in northeastern British Columbia , where a certain portion of the region is also referred to as the Peace River Block . The Peace River Country includes the incorporated communities of Fort St. John , Dawson Creek , Tumbler Ridge and Chetwynd in British Columbia. Major communities in

270-582: Is located in British Columbia along the river on reserve No 206, based on Treaty No. 8 and signed by the Beaver community as the last tribe in May 1900. There were 140 inhabitants in 2001, 125 thereof Indians. 50% of the inhabitants were fluent in the Athabascan (Beaver) language; 28,6% of the population spoke Beaver as their mother-tongue. The Doig Airport is located at Doig, Alberta . The Doig Formation ,

300-554: The King's Royal Regiment of New York as lieutenants. By 1778, for his safety as a son of loyalists, young Mackenzie was sent, or went accompanied by two aunts, to Montreal . By 1779 (a year before his father's death at Carleton Island ), Mackenzie had a secured apprenticeship with Finlay, Gregory & Co., one of the most influential fur trading companies in Montreal, which was later administered by Archibald Norman McLeod . In 1787,

330-701: The Mackenzie Highway . Other important transportation routes include the northern part of Alberta Highway 2 , Alberta Highway 35 , British Columbia Highway 29 , British Columbia Highway 97 , and Alberta Highway 49 . Regional air transport hubs are Grande Prairie Airport and Peace River Airport in Alberta and Fort St. John Airport in British Columbia. Health care is provided through British Columbia's Northern Health and through Alberta Health Services , on behalf of Alberta's Ministry of Health . Alexander Mackenzie (explorer) Sir Alexander Mackenzie ( c.  1764 – 12 March 1820)

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360-411: The former French territory in what is now southern Quebec and Ontario). The words were later inscribed permanently by surveyors. The site is now Sir Alexander Mackenzie Provincial Park and is designated First Crossing of North America National Historic Site . In 2016, Mackenzie was named a National Historic Person . He returned the way he had come, arriving at Fort Chipewyan on Aug. 24. He spent

390-731: The "Grand River." The river came to be known as the Mackenzie River in his honour. In 1791, Mackenzie returned to Great Britain to study the new advance in the measurement of longitude . In the aftermath of the Nootka Crisis with Spain, he returned to Canada in 1792, and set out to find a route to the Pacific. Accompanied by two native guides (one named Cancre), his cousin, Alexander MacKay , six Canadian voyageurs (Joseph Landry, Charles Ducette, François Beaulieu , Baptiste Bisson, Francois Courtois, Jacques Beauchamp), and

420-542: The Alberta portion of the Peace Country include Grande Prairie , Peace River , High Level and Fairview . It has no fixed boundaries but covers some 260,000 to 390,000 km (100,000 to 150,000 square miles). In British Columbia, the area extends from Monkman Provincial Park and Tumbler Ridge in the south, to Hudson's Hope and the Williston Lake in the west, to Fort St. John and Charlie Lake in

450-627: The Bella Coola Valley, BC. He is referenced in the 1981 folk song "Northwest Passage" by Stan Rogers . The Alexander Mackenzie rose (Explorer Series), developed in 1985 by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada , was named in his honour. Between 1989 and 1993, the Mackenzie Bicentennial Sea-to-Sea Expeditions of Lakehead University attempted a segmented re-enactment of the journey between Montreal and Bella Coola, British Columbia , but

480-821: The Continent and West Coast of North America." The British government, at the time predicting conflict with Napoleon, took no action. (Later Simon Fraser and David Thompson worked to extend the Canadian fur trade and prevent U.S. incursion in what would be Canada. ) Mackenzie was knighted in 1802. He returned to Canada, where as Sir Mackenzie, he was lionized, He was elected to the Legislature of Lower Canada . He served as member for Huntingdon County from 1804 to 1808. In 1812 Mackenzie, then aged 48, returned to Scotland, where he married 14-year-old Geddes Mackenzie, twin heiress of Avoch . They had two sons and

510-754: The Hudson's Bay Company and the East India Company. Mackenzie was born in Stornoway in Lewis . He was the third of the four children born to Kenneth 'Corc' Mackenzie (1731–1780) and his wife Isabella MacIver, from another prominent mercantile family in Stornoway. When only 14 years old, Mackenzie's father served as an ensign to protect Stornoway during the Jacobite rising of 1745 . He later became

540-700: The XY Company). In his journal Mackenzie recorded the Carrier language for the first time. In 1801 he returned to London and that year the journals of his exploratory journeys were published. [1] (They were later reprinted. ) He then presented a detailed plan of his west coast project to the British government "Preliminaries to the Establishment of a Permanent British Fishery and Trade in Furs etc. on

570-797: The age of 56 (his date of birth is unknown). He is buried at Avoch on the Black Isle . The Mackenzie River and Mount Sir Alexander are named for him, as is Mackenzie Bay , and the municipality of Mackenzie, British Columbia . There are a number of schools in Canada named after him, such as Sir Alexander Mackenzie Senior Public School in Toronto, Sir Alexander Mackenzie Elementary School in Vancouver, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie Elementary School in St. Albert. Also Sir Alexander Mackenzie School in

600-596: The agricultural area, known as the Peace River Block, originated as a railway grant which wound up for a time under Dominion jurisdiction and managed by offices in Alberta until returned to British Columbia following ongoing jurisdictional conflicts. Forestry plays a large role in the Peace Country economy. Pulp mills were built in Chetwynd, Peace River and Grande Prairie beginning in the 1970s. The economy received another boost when oil and gas were found in

630-412: The beginning of the 20th century, the farming potential of the area was advertised by the federal government, but a settlement was scarce because of difficult travel conditions through the muskeg . With the arrival of the railway in 1916, and following the opening of land for homesteaders in 1910, farming and ranching took off in the fertile Peace Country. The settlement of the British Columbia portion of

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660-716: The company merged with the North West Company . On behalf of the North West Company, Mackenzie journeyed to Lake Athabasca where, in 1788, he was one of the founders of Fort Chipewyan . He had been sent to replace Peter Pond , a partner in the North West Company. From Pond, he learned that the First Nations people understood that the local rivers flowed to the north-west. Thinking that it would lead to Cook Inlet in Alaska , he set out by canoe on

690-625: The east, to Fort Vermilion , High Level and Rainbow Lake in the north. The first European to explore the area was Sir Alexander MacKenzie , who travelled down the Peace in 1789 and eventually reached the Mackenzie River and the Arctic Ocean . In 1793 he used the same route to reach the Pacific Ocean . Subsequently, the region saw a surge in the fur trade , with forts built along the river from Fort Vermilion to Hudson's Hope. At

720-613: The north. The term is used also in a broader sense to mean the whole of the Northeastern Interior past the Rockies, including Fort Nelson and other parts of the Liard drainage , and before W.A.C. Bennett Dam included the upper Peace River through its canyon between Finlay Forks and Hudson's Hope. In Alberta, the region stretches from Grande Prairie and Valleyview in the south, to High Prairie and Lesser Slave Lake in

750-614: The region. In 1952, gas was struck in the Fort St. John No. 1 well, and the first refinery was built in 1957 at Taylor . The massive Elmworth natural gas field in northwestern Alberta was discovered in the mid-70s along with other major gas fields in British Columbia and Alberta. Both Fort St. John and Grande Prairie experienced rapid economic and population growth as a result. Peace Country contains Canada's northernmost lands suitable for agriculture . Crops raised include canola , oats, peas, and barley. Some cattle ranching and beekeeping

780-764: The river known to the local Dene First Nations people as the Dehcho (Mackenzie River) , on 3 July 1789. On 14 July he reached the Arctic Ocean, rather than the Pacific. Later, in a letter to his cousin Roderick , he called the waterway "the River Disappointment," since the river did not prove to be the Northwest Passage , as he had hoped. In fact the story is probably apocryphal, as Mackenzie's own and contemporary records merely refer to it as

810-781: The route of the Peace River. He crossed the Great Divide and found the upper reaches of the Fraser River , but was warned by the local natives that the Fraser Canyon to the south was unnavigable and populated by belligerent tribes. He was instead directed to follow a grease trail by ascending the West Road River , crossing over the Coast Mountains and descending the Bella Coola River to

840-511: The sea. He followed this advice and reached the Pacific coast on 20 July 1793, at Bella Coola, British Columbia , on North Bentinck Arm , an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. Having done this, he had completed the first recorded transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico, 12 years before Lewis and Clark . He had unknowingly missed meeting George Vancouver at Bella Coola by 48 days. He had wanted to continue westward out of

870-555: The winter there working in the fur trade. The next year he returned to Montreal. Soon after, he travelled to the U.S. and to London. He returned to Montreal and became one of the leading partners of the North West Company. In 1799 he left the Company and travelled to London to lobby on behalf of the Canadian fur trade. In 1800 he returned to Canada and aided in the formation of the New North West Company (also known as

900-457: Was a Scottish explorer and fur trader known for accomplishing the first crossing of North America by a European in 1793. The Mackenzie River and Mount Sir Alexander are named after him. As a leading member of the North West Company, he aspired to extend the Company's operations into western Canada and selling those furs in China. His hopes thus were intrusions on the monopoly positions of both

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