Hay River, Canada Hotels, Vacations, Tourism

HAY RIVER (pop. 3100) is a typical no-nonsense northern town designed for practicalities rather than sightseeing self-indulgence. Long a strategic site, it's been inhabited for thousands of years by Slavey Dene people attracted by its position on Great Slave Lake at the mouth of the Hay River. White settlers had put it on the map by 1854, but the inevitable Hudson's Bay Company trading post arrived only in 1868, and it wasn't until recently – with the completion of the Mackenzie Hwy, oil and gas exploration, and the arrival of a railway to carry zinc ore from local mines – that the town became … more »