The Most Beautiful Lakes in Canada
7 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful lakes in Canada are Lake Louise, Peyto Lake and Moraine Lake. The list covers 7 lakes. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Canada has more lakes than any other country, a legacy of the ice sheets that covered almost all of it during the last ice age. Glaciers scraped basins into bedrock, dammed valleys with moraines and left behind countless lakes when they retreated. In the Rocky Mountains of Alberta and British Columbia, glaciers still feed many of them, and the fine rock flour carried in their meltwater produces the intense blue and green colours for which the Canadian Rockies are known.
Lake Louise, in Banff National Park, sits beneath the Victoria Glacier and has been the emblem of the Rockies since the railway era. Nearby Moraine Lake lies in the Valley of the Ten Peaks and appeared on the back of Canadian twenty-dollar bills. Peyto Lake, seen from above along the Icefields Parkway, is shaped like the head of a wolf and turns a vivid milky blue in summer.
Farther north and west, the scale and character change. Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park is the largest natural lake in the Canadian Rockies, and its tiny Spirit Island is among the most photographed places in the country. Emerald Lake, the largest lake in Yoho National Park, is ringed by forest and peaks of the President Range, and Lake O'Hara, also in Yoho, is set in an alpine basin among high cliffs and smaller lakes. Spotted Lake in British Columbia is something else entirely: in summer its water evaporates into dozens of mineral-rich pools of different colours, and it is a sacred site for the Syilx Okanagan Nation.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Louise | Lake | |
| 2 | Peyto Lake | Lake | |
| 3 | Moraine Lake | Lake | |
| 4 | Maligne Lake | Lake | |
| 5 | Emerald Lake (Yoho) | Lake | |
| 6 | Spotted Lake | Lake | |
| 7 | Lake O'Hara | Lake |
01 Lake Louise
Canada51.412° N 116.228° W
Chensiyuan · CC BY-SA 4.0 Winter changes it entirely. The lake freezes, the glacier turns white on white, and the surface becomes a skating rink beneath the mountains; ice fishing, snowshoeing and dog sledding take the place of canoes and kayaks.
Did you know? Abbot's death led the Canadian Pacific Railway to bring Swiss mountain guides to the area, and they built huts and teahouses on the surrounding trails.
02 Peyto Lake
Canada51.725° N 116.522° W
Tobias Alt, Tobi 87 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The viewpoint lies close to Bow Summit, at 2,088 metres the highest point on the Icefields Parkway. A short paved path leads from the parking area to viewing platforms, rebuilt by Parks Canada in 2021, and paths continue higher for quieter angles over the valley.
Did you know? Between 1896 and 1966 the Peyto Glacier shrank by more than a billion cubic metres of ice.
03 Moraine Lake
Canada51.322° N 116.186° W
Image by 12019 from Pixabay The best time to be here is early in the day, when the lake lies still and the first light catches the summits of the Ten Peaks one by one. Just past the lodge on the shore, a trail climbs into Larch Valley and on towards Sentinel Pass; in the second half of September the larches there turn a brilliant gold, and the valley becomes one of the great autumn sights of the Rockies.
Did you know? The tallest of the ten is Deltaform Mountain at 3,424 metres, while the higher Mount Hungabee was left off Allen's list altogether.
04 Maligne Lake
Canada52.664° N 117.534° W
Christian Abend from Laufen /, Bayern / Deutschland · CC BY-SA 2.0 The valley has a hydrological curiosity too. Downstream, at Medicine Lake, the Maligne River sinks into a system of limestone caves and sinkholes, so that the lake swells with summer meltwater and shrinks almost to a stream in winter; the water travels some 16–17 km underground and resurfaces near Maligne Canyon, one of the longest known underground drainage systems in Canada. Grizzly and black bears, caribou, moose, wolves and mountain sheep live in the valley, and ospreys and eagles fish the lake. The Skyline Trail, the park's best-known high-level multi-day hike, begins here, and the Opal Hills and Bald Hills give shorter climbs above the water.
Did you know? Mary Schäffer returned in 1911 at the Canadian government's request to survey the lake in detail, and named several of the surrounding peaks.
05 Emerald Lake (Yoho)
Emerald Lake
Canada51.444° N 116.531° W
Image by moju72 from Pixabay An easy trail of a little over 5 km circles the shore, with the view changing at every turn as the peaks of the President Range swing in and out of the frame. More demanding paths climb into the surrounding basins. Steller's jays are common around the lake, and both black bears and grizzlies live in the area.
Did you know? Mount Burgess gave its name to the Burgess Shale, the roughly 508-million-year-old fossil beds discovered nearby by Charles Walcott in 1909, famous for preserving soft-bodied animals.
06 Spotted Lake
Canada49.078° N 119.567° W
AndrewEnns · CC BY-SA 3.0 The lake is meant to be seen, not entered. A roadside viewpoint on Highway 3 looks down across the spots from beside a fence, and a sign asks visitors to respect the site; the spots are at their clearest in the heat of summer, when evaporation is strongest, and change size and shape as the season goes on. For a closer understanding of its meaning, guided visits are occasionally led by Syilx guides.
Did you know? At the height of a dry summer the lake can split into several hundred separate spots, each with its own mineral mix and colour.
07 Lake O'Hara
Canada51.356° N 116.330° W
John Johnston · CC BY 2.0 The lake takes its name from Colonel Robert O'Hara, from County Galway in Ireland, who heard of the valley from the surveyor J.J. McArthur. Access is deliberately limited to protect the fragile alpine environment: there is no private traffic, and numbers on the park bus are capped. Lake O'Hara Lodge stands by the shore, and the Alpine Club of Canada's Elizabeth Parker Hut lies in the meadows a short walk away.
Did you know? In 1894 the American climber Samuel Allen gave many surrounding peaks Stoney names; Wiwaxy, for one, is the Stoney Nakoda word for windy.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful lakes in Canada?
- On our list, Lake Louise ranks first, followed by Peyto Lake and Moraine Lake.
- Why are the lakes in Banff so blue?
- Meltwater from glaciers carries fine rock flour into the lakes. The particles stay suspended in the water and scatter blue and green light, which gives lakes such as Lake Louise and Moraine Lake their colour.
- Was Moraine Lake on the Canadian twenty-dollar bill?
- Yes. The Valley of the Ten Peaks above Moraine Lake appeared on the reverse of the Canadian twenty-dollar note in the 1969 and 1979 series.
- Why is Spotted Lake covered in spots?
- The lake is rich in minerals such as magnesium sulfate. When summer heat evaporates most of the water, it leaves separate pools whose colours vary with their mineral content.
- How many lakes are on this list in Canada?
- The list covers 7 lakes.