Colonial Despatches

The Peace River originates in Williston Lake, by way of the narrow Dinosaur Lake, in east-central British Columbia. The majority of its roughly 1000 km course runs through northern Alberta, its endpoint being near Lake Athabasca.

Peace River has gone by many names, Indigenous and European. Maps from the 1780s refer to it as the “River of Peace”, and Alexander Mackenzie's journal from 1793 notes it as “Unjigah or Peace River”.1 “Unjigah”, along with its many Anglicized variants, is likely Athapaskan for peace.2 A number of First Nation and settler communities exist along and near this history-rich river.

• 1. Peace River, BC Geographical Names Information System.
• 2. Ibid.