Yukon River

When Europeans first set foot in Canada, they were faced with a wilderness barrier of trackless forests. Fortunately, this new land was also crisscrossed by many grand rivers, and these became the early routes of discovery, settlement and growth. The third set of Canada's River Heritage stamps, released August 10 in commemorative booklet form, features five of Canada's important heritage rivers: the St. John; the St. Lawrence; the Red; the Fraser; and the Yukon. The Yukon River, the 10th longest in the world at 1368 kilometres, starts in Tagish Lake along the British Columbia-Yukon border, just a few kilometres from the Pacific Ocean, then flows north-west into Alaska, enters the Arctic Circle near Fort Yukon, finally turning south-west and emptying into the Bering Sea at Norton Sound. The river has been a route to promised riches - as it was during the famed Klondike Gold Rush - and a channel of migration. It is believed that at least 15,000 years ago, Indians trecked across the land bridge from Asia and moved southward along the Yukon River, as did the Arctic-Mongoloid ancestors of today's Inuit and Aleuts. Ironically, this oldest route of immigration was the last major river of North America to be discovered by Europeans - Russians from Alaska first saw it in 1834. Canada Post Corporation's Yukon River stamp depicts "hoodoos" in bluffs near Hootalingua and in a vignette, shows the sternwheeler, Klondike.