The North Saskatchewan is one of Canada's outstanding heritage rivers. Rising in Canada’s Rocky Mountains and emptying into Lake Winnipeg, this extensive river corridor provided a major east-west link across Canada, facilitating exploration, trade, and settlement for more than 100 years from the time explorers and fur traders first travelled through the area in 1807.
  The section of the North Saskatchewan River designated to the Canadian Heritage Rivers System (CHRS) flows through Alberta’s Banff National Park, a setting which provides visitors with some of the most spectacular scenery in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. From its source at the Saskatchewan Glacier and throughout its course to the park boundary and beyond, the North Saskatchewan reveals many outstanding natural heritage features typical of the Eastern Main Ranges of the Canadian Rockies. Important, too, is its association with significant historical aspects of the exploration and development of the Canadian west and the expansion of Canada's national park system.

Some of the description borrowed from
The Canadian Heritage Rivers System
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