Sturgeon-Weir River
Sturgeon-Weir River is in east-central Saskatchewan, Canada. It starts at Corneille Lake near the community of Pelican Narrows and flows about 130 kilometers (81 miles) southeast until it joins the Saskatchewan River at Cumberland Lake.
Along the way it receives several tributaries, including the Wildnest River on the left and the Goose River, Morton River, and Foy Creek on the right.
The river runs through the Churchill River Uplands, a boreal forest area at the southern edge of the Precambrian Shield. The landscape has rolling ridges and rocky outcrops with dense conifer forests of black spruce and jack pine. Ground cover includes mosses and lichens. Wildlife is rich and includes caribou, moose, black bear, lynx, wolf, beaver, muskrat, red-backed vole, and snowshoe hare. Birds such as raven, common loon, spruce grouse, bald eagle, Canada jay, hawk-owl, and many waterfowl are common.
Sturgeon-Weir has long been an important voyage route, linking the Saskatchewan and Churchill river systems. People have used it since prehistoric times, and archeological finds include pottery dating to about 1100 CE. The first Europeans to explore it were likely fur traders in the late 1760s. In 1776, Alexander Henry and others built Fort Beaver Lake at the river’s outlet from Amisk Lake, creating a key fur-trade route toward northern Canada. The river’s steep gradients earned it the name Rivière Maligne or Bad River from voyageurs, who described the navigation as very difficult. Early mapmakers noted it as a northward river along the back of the Churchill, and it was later named Sturgeon-Weir River on an 1814 map by David Thompson.
Today, the Sturgeon-Weir is a popular wilderness canoe route, with trapping, hunting, fishing, and tourism also common in the region.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:31 (CET).