CELPIP Reading Part 3 Practice Test: The Mackenzie River: Canada’s Longest River System

Paragraph A

Canada has thousands of rivers, but none can match the Mackenzie for sheer length. Its main channel runs about 1,700 kilometres from Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories to the Beaufort Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean. When the rivers upstream of the lake are included, such as the Peace and the Athabasca, whose waters combine in the Slave River and flow into Great Slave Lake, the system stretches more than 4,000 kilometres, making it the longest in the country and second in North America only to the Mississippi–Missouri. Its drainage basin is just as impressive. Rain and melting snow from parts of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories all find their way into it, and in total the basin covers roughly one fifth of Canada’s land area.

Paragraph B

Long before Europeans arrived, the river served as a highway and a source of food for the Dene and other Indigenous peoples of the North. The Dene call it Deh Cho, meaning “big river.” Its English name comes from Alexander Mackenzie, a Scottish-born fur trader with the North West Company, who travelled its full length in 1789 with the help of Indigenous guides. Mackenzie had hoped the river would carry him west to the Pacific Ocean and open a new route for the fur trade. Instead, it led him north to the Arctic coast, a discovery that left him deeply disappointed. Within a few decades, trading posts had been built along its banks, and several of today’s communities, including Fort Simpson and Fort Good Hope, grew up around them.

Paragraph C

For much of the year, the Mackenzie is locked in ice. The freeze usually lasts from late fall until May or June, and spring breakup can be dramatic, as huge slabs of ice jam together and sometimes flood low-lying communities. In winter, crossings are built on the frozen river so that trucks can reach towns with no all-season road. When the ice is gone, the river becomes a supply route of a different kind: tugboats push barges loaded with fuel, building materials and groceries to settlements along its banks and on the Arctic coast. Because the shipping season is so short, a delivery that misses the last barge may not arrive until the following summer. Near Fort Providence, a bridge opened in 2012, replacing the ferry and ice crossing that drivers had relied on for decades.

Paragraph D

Near its mouth, the river spreads into the Mackenzie Delta, a maze of channels, lakes and wetlands that is one of the largest Arctic deltas in the world. The delta is home to muskrats, fish such as whitefish, and huge numbers of migrating birds in summer. Each July, beluga whales gather in the warm, shallow waters where the river meets the sea, and Inuvialuit hunters have harvested them there for generations. Today, scientists keep a close eye on the region. Thawing permafrost along the riverbanks and changes in when the ice forms and breaks up are seen as signs of a warming climate, with consequences for wildlife and for the people who depend on the river.