Chestermere Lake is a man-made reservoir

Reservoir

A reservoir , artificial lake or dam is used to store water.Reservoirs may be created in river valleys by the construction of a dam or may be built by excavation in the ground or by conventional construction techniques such as brickwork or cast concrete.The term reservoir may also be used to...

 in Chestermere

Chestermere, Alberta

Chestermere is a town adjacent to the City of Calgary in the Province of Alberta, Canada within Rocky View County. It is largely a bedroom community of Calgary and is a member municipality of the Calgary Regional Partnership...

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

It was built in the 1880's by the Canadian Pacific Railway

Canadian Pacific Railway

The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...

, for irrigation of the area between Calgary and Strathmore

Strathmore, Alberta

Strathmore is a town located along the Trans-Canada Highway in southern Alberta, Canada, east of the city of Calgary, within the boundaries of Wheatland County.- History :...

. It is presently used mainly for recreation purposes, such as swimming, windsurfing, fishing and skating (in winter). The town of Chestermere surrounds the lake on three sides. The Trans-Canada Highway

Trans-Canada Highway

The Trans-Canada Highway is a federal-provincial highway system that joins the ten provinces of Canada. It is, along with the Trans-Siberian Highway and Australia's Highway 1, one of the world's longest national highways, with the main route spanning 8,030 km...

 follows the northeastern shore, while the railway tracks pass by the southern shore.

The lake covers a surface of 2.65 square kilometres and has a maximum depth of 7 metres. It drains into two irrigation canals and is filled via a canal from the Bow River

Bow River

The Bow River is a river in the Canadian province of Alberta. It is a tributary of the South Saskatchewan River, and is considered the headwater of the Nelson River....

.

The phrase "Chestermere Lake" is actually inaccurate as "mere

Mere (lake)

Mere in English refers to a lake that is broad in relation to its depth, e.g. Martin Mere. A significant effect of its shallow depth is that for all or most of the time, it has no thermocline.- Etymology :...

" means lake in English. With "Chester

Castra

The Latin word castra, with its singular castrum, was used by the ancient Romans to mean buildings or plots of land reserved to or constructed for use as a military defensive position. The word appears in both Oscan and Umbrian as well as in Latin. It may have descended from Indo-European to Italic...

" an English word derived from the Latin for a defensive fort and meaning "Castle", this would make "Chestermere Lake" translate as "Lake Castle Lake".