Sketch map of Great Bear Lake in the Mackenzie District of
the Northwest Territories of Canada.

An inset of a larger, magnified map of the region is
featured in the lower-right corner, showing how the Great Bear Lake is
connected to the Coronation Gulf in the northeast and the Great Slave Lake in
the southeast via several waterways.

James Mackintosh Bell was a Canadian geologist and
cartographer renowned for his early 20th-century exploratory surveys. In 1899, he
pioneered an exploratory survey of the Great Slave Lake whilst working for the
Geological Survey of Canada, and the following year, he continued this track survey
northwards to the nearby Great Bear Lake region. These surveys were important
because they were some of the first to map the shoreline and connecting
waterways of the region’s lakes. A "sketch map" of these works was
later issued by the Royal Geographical Society and published in their Royal
Geographical Journal in 1901. This resulting map significantly advanced topographic and hydrological knowledge of the remote northern region, despite its limited
precision.

Original colour. [CAN2355]