ᐃᒡᓗᓕᒃ Igloolik

History

Information about the area's earliest inhabitants comes mainly from numerous archaeological sites on the island; some dating back more than 4,000 years. First contact with Europeans came when the British Royal Navy ships HMS Fury and HMS Hecla, under the command of Captain William Edward Parry, wintered in Igloolik in 1822. The island was visited in 1867 and 1868 by the American explorer Charles Francis Hall in his search for survivors of the lost Franklin Expedition. In 1913, Alfred Tremblay, a French-Canadian prospector with Captain Joseph-Elzéar Bernier's expedition to Pond Inlet, extended his mineral exploration overland to Igloolik, and in 1921 a member of Knud Rasmussen's Fifth Thule Expedition visited the island. The first permanent presence by southerners in Igloolik came with the establishment of a Roman Catholic Mission in the 1930s. By the end of the decade, the Hudson's Bay Company had also set up a post on the island. Non-indigenous establishments, such as Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) stations, day schools, and clinics, were here before they came to be in surrounding communities. The Igloolik Research Centre focuses on documenting Inuit traditional knowledge and technology, as well as climatology and seismic data research.

Most-observed species

• Glaucous Gull

  Larus hyperboreus Gunnerus, 1767 · Aves
  2
• American Pipit

  Anthus rubescens (Tunstall, 1771) · Aves
  1
• Long-tailed Duck

  Clangula hyemalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  1
• nodding saxifrage

  Saxifraga cernua L. · Magnoliopsida
  1
• American herring gull, Smithsonian Gull

  Larus smithsonianus Coues, 1862 · Aves
  1