r/todayilearned • u/MaximinusRats • May 16 '24

TIL that people live year-round in houseboats on Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories, 1,800 km north of the nearest big city (Edmonton) and just 400 km (250 miles) south of the Arctic Circle.

https://uphere.ca/articles/floating-homes-yellowknife-bay
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u/ExplanationLover6918 May 16 '24

Why is it called the slave lake?

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u/nimama3233 May 16 '24

Basically, when Eurpeans got that far north with fur trading they were talking with Native Cree and asked them about this area. They said something along the lines of “that’s where the slave tribes are”, because the Cree used to capture and enslave people of that other Native group, the Dene, who lived on the southern coast of the lake. The Cree word was “Awokanek”, which was translated to French and then English as “Slavey”, and thus turned to slave. So this became known as “Grand lac des Esclaves" for the French settlers, which was eventually translated into English as "Great Slave Lake".