Safe traffic on the ice is generally from late December to early March.

Under the French Regime (completed in 1760), this river was designated "Rivière du Nord" because of its situation opposite to the "Rivière du Sud", the mouth of which flows 15.5 km upstream on the east bank.

This term evokes a landing of the troops of the American general Richard Montgomery (1738-1775) carried out in the autumn of 1775 in order to attack Fort Saint-Jean.

At the beginning of the 1960s, its toponym became "Bernier river", after Grand-Bernier and Petit-Bernier, the traditional names for the cadastral rows where the watercourse takes its source.

[2] The toponym "Rivière Bernier" was formalized on December 5, 1968, at the Commission de toponymie du Québec.