Canada Draining to the Gulf of Mexico

Several distinct continental divides cross through Canada. Water flows eventually to one of five different bodies of water depending on its point of origination. Huge portions of Canadian territory rest within watersheds draining to the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and Hudson Bay. However one small corner of Alberta and Saskatchewan drains to the Gulf of Mexico. It covers barely 20,000 square kilometers, less than two tenths of one percent of the Canadian landmass.

Natural Resources Canada provides both a greatly detailed map and an inventory of drainage basins and their associated river watersheds. It lists only the Milk River, Frenchman River, Battle Creek and Lodge Creek as part of the drainage basin that leads eventually to the Gulf of Mexico. These are all a subset of the Upper Missouri River that flow towards the Mississippi River.

The Frenchman River flows through the western portions of mixed prairie grasslands. Fortunately the western portion of Grasslands National Park preserves much of it in a natural state (map). It courses through towns like Eastend, located remotely on the Saskatchewan prairie.

Dinocountry

Some local citizens call this section of the Frenchman watershed “Dinocountry.” There they’ve constructed the T.rex Discovery Centre as a primary attraction in Eastend (map). Paleontologists unearthed “Scotty” the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton near here in 1994.

Rivers flowing from these selected grasslands of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan soon depart Canada. From there, water traverses the entire length of the United States and terminates at the mouth of the the Mississippi River beyond New Orleans. This tiny sliver of Canada represents the far northern extreme of the Mississippi River basin.

If a slight breeze caused a drop of water to fall onto the other side of the continental divide it would travel instead through the Nelson River watershed and eventually reach Hudson Bay. Fate determines whether a droplet flows towards one body of water or another, separated by more than 3,000 kilometres.