Waterways is a locality within the

Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (abbreviated RMWB) is a specialized municipality in northeast Alberta, Canada. It is the largest regional municipality in Canada by area (105650.88km2 , this number includes Wood Buffalo Nation Park o ...

northern Alberta Northern Alberta is a geographic region located in the Canadian province of Alberta. An informally defined cultural region, the boundaries of Northern Alberta are not fixed. Under some schemes, the region encompasses everything north of the ce ...

, Canada. It is now a neighbourhood within the

Fort McMurray Fort McMurray ( ) is an urban service area in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in Alberta, Canada. It is located in northeast Alberta, in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands, surrounded by boreal forest. It has played a significa ...

urban service area along the west bank of the Clearwater River, south of the river's confluence with the

Athabasca River The Athabasca River (French: ''Rivière Athabasca'') in Alberta, Canada, originates at the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park and flows more than before emptying into Lake Athabasca. Much of the land along its banks is protected in nationa ...

History

In 1921, Waterways became a major shipping hub when the

Alberta and Great Waterways Railway Northern Alberta Railways was a Canadian railway which served northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia. Jointly owned by both Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway, NAR existed as a separate company from 1929 until 19 ...

reached the town, making it the northernmost point on the North American railroad grid. Cargo for destinations farther north was shipped to Waterways and then transferred to barges, after which fleets of tugboats took them to destinations in the

Mackenzie River The Mackenzie River (French: ; Slavey language, Slavey: ' èh tʃʰò literally ''big river''; Inuvialuktun: ' uːkpɑk literally ''great river'') is a river in the Canadian Canadian boreal forest, boreal forest and tundra. It forms, ...

watershed. In 1930, Karl Clark shipped a plant designed to separate

bitumen Bitumen ( , ) is an immensely viscosity, viscous constituent of petroleum. Depending on its exact composition, it can be a sticky, black liquid or an apparently solid mass that behaves as a liquid over very large time scales. In American Engl ...

from the

Athabasca oil sands The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of oil sands rich in bitumen, a heavy and viscous form of petroleum, in northeastern Alberta, Canada. These reserves are one of the largest sources of unconventi ...

to Waterways and set it up nearby across the Clearwater River. Since that time, the rail line to Waterways has played an important role in transporting heavy equipment and supplies needed for the development of the

oil sands Oil sands are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. They are either loose sands, or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen (a dense and extremely viscous ...

and the accompanying growth of the surrounding communities. In 1933, Waterways gave its name to the

Waterways Formation The Beaverhill Lake Group is a geologic unit of Middle Devonian to Late Devonian (late Givetian to Frasnian) age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin that is present in the southwestern Northwest Territories, northeastern British Columbia an ...

, a sequence of

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

s and

calcareous Calcareous () is an adjective meaning "mostly or partly composed of calcium carbonate", in other words, containing lime (mineral), lime or being chalky. The term is used in a wide variety of Science, scientific disciplines. In zoology ''Calcare ...

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of Clay mineral, clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g., Kaolinite, kaolin, aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4) and tiny f ...

s that outcrops along the Clearwater and Athabasca Rivers near the town.Glass, D.J. (editor) 1997. Lexicon of Canadian Stratigraphy, vol. 4, Western Canada including eastern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and southern Manitoba. Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, Calgary, 1423 p. on CD-ROM. . In 1937, a

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

plant was built at Waterways to recover rock salt from the subsurface by solution mining and evaporation. The salt was part of the

Prairie Evaporite Formation The Prairie Evaporite Formation, also known as the Prairie Formation, is a geologic formation of Middle Devonian (Givetian) age that consists primarily of halite (rock salt) and other evaporite minerals. It is present beneath the plains of nort ...

, which was about thick and lay at a depth of about at that location. The plant operated until 1950, producing of salt. Waterways was an important, transfer point for

pitchblende Uraninite, also known as pitchblende, is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO2 but because of oxidation typically contains variable proportions of U3O8. Radioactive decay of the urani ...

ore during the Second World War. The ore was mined at Eldorado Mine, then shipped by barges to Waterways, where it was transferred to rail cars for shipping onwards to

Port Hope, Ontario Port Hope is a municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, about east of Toronto and west of Kingston, Ontario, Kingston. It is at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County, Onta ...

. The whole operation was all a top-secret uranium source for the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

. An unwanted legacy was nuclear contamination of soils around Waterways, which were much later cleaned up. In 1964, shipping from Waterways to the Mackenzie River region ceased after Hay River, on

Great Slave Lake Great Slave Lake is the second-largest lake in the Northwest Territories, Canada (after Great Bear Lake), List of lakes by depth, the deepest lake in North America at , and the List of lakes by area, tenth-largest lake in the world by area. It ...

in the

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of Provinces and territorie ...

, became the northern terminus of the rail grid. Local shipping from Waterways continued, however, and the rail line to Waterways eventually became part of the

Northern Alberta Railway Northern Alberta Railways was a Canadian railway which served northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia. Jointly owned by both Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway, NAR existed as a separate company from 1929 until 19 ...

, the

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company () is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue a ...

, and then the

Athabasca Northern Railway The Athabasca Northern Railway is a shortline railway in Alberta, Canada. Originally built as the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway between 1909 and 1925, the line runs between Boyle, Alberta and Fort McMurray, Alberta. It eventually became ...

, and finally back to the CNR. During the

2016 Fort McMurray Wildfire On May 1, 2016, a wildfire began southwest of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. On May 3, it swept through the community, forcing the largest wildfire evacuation in Alberta's history, with upwards of 88,000 people forced from their homes. ...

, Waterways was critically damaged. According to fire damage reports on May 4, 90% of homes in Waterways had already been lost to the wildfire."Fort McMurray Wildfire Updates". Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. May 4, 2016. Retrieved May 4, 2016.

Demographics

The population of the Waterways neighbourhood in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo's 2006 municipal census was 750.

References

External links

Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo
{{coord, 56.700, N, 111.340, W, scale:60000_region:CA, display=title, name=Waterways Fort McMurray

History

Demographics

See also

References

External links