Churchill River (Atlantic)
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The Churchill River is a river in Newfoundland and Labrador which flows east from the Smallwood Reservoir in Labrador into the Atlantic Ocean via Lake Melville. The river is 856 km long and drains an area of 79,800 kmē.
Churchill Falls is the site of a major hydroelectric project, which has a rated capacity of 5,428 MW. Other hydroelectric plants on the river are planned bringing the total to over 9,200 MW. The Churchill Falls development has become a source of friction between two Canadian provinces. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador believes that, although the project is located in Labrador, Hydro Quebec, which provided a major part of the financing and access to the North American power grid, has taken an unfair share of the profits from this development. Hydro Quebec buys power from the Churchill Falls project at rates established in 1969.
This river was originally known as "Mishtashipu" or "Grand River", by the Innu. In 1839, John MacLean named it the Hamilton River after Sir Charles Hamilton, who was Governor of Newfoundland from 1818 to 1825. In 1965, it was renamed to honour former Prime Minister of Britain Sir Winston Churchill.
Tributaries of the Churchill River include the:
External links
- Canadian Council for Geographic Education page with a series of articles on the history of the Churchill River (http://www.ccge.org/ccge/english/Resources/rivers/tr_rivers_churchillRiver.asp)
