 The North Saskatchewan River has always been a major trade route from Hudson Bay and central Canada across the Canadian Prairies to the Canadian Rockies.During the fur trade era, birch bark canoes and York boats travelled up and down the Saskatchewan delivering trade goods and amassing furs for transportation to Europe.The North Saskatchewan also witnessed a lively, although short-lived, era of steamboat shipping during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s.