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Home Resolute Bay Camp I: Dragon Creek,
Camp II: Blackwelder Mtns,
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Resolute Bay is a young community, created in 1947 as a weather station and military airfield. In the following years, Inuit from Port Harrison, Quebec and Pond Inlet moved to Resolute creating the 200+ human population that now calls Resolute Bay home. This part of Cornwallis Island has been know for centuries to hunters from Pond Inlet. Sir William Parry, in search of the Northwest Passage, was perhaps the first European to see and visit Cornwallis Island. That was in 1819. Several years later, in the mid-1800's, Resolute saw much Western activity as numerous expeditions searched for Sir John Franklin's lost crew. The community's name comes from HMS Resolute which wintered there one year.
Technically, Resolute Bay was not our first stop in the Arcticó the
territorial capital, Iqaluit, wasó but it might as well have been.
Resolute Bay is the most northern point in Arctic Canadian to which you
can take a commercial flight, and it functions as both a residence and
a point of departure for business farther north (mining, exploration, adventure,
hunting, or research, for example). The Canadian Continental
Polar Shelf Project is stationed here, and we were fortunate to spend a
few days at their station while we waited for poor weather to clear from
Axel Heiberg Island. Resolute Bay is usually shrouded in clouds
and high winds while high pressure over the Arctic Ocean keeps the skies
clear in the Northeast Arctic; we were experiencing a switch of climes.
While we waited for the storms to clear, we explored Resolute Bay and its
surrounding country on Cornwallis Island.
| The center of town, like any good crossroads, has a mileage marker pointing toward various destinations. You get the feeling that you are a long way from the rest of the world. |
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| This is what remains of a several hundred year-old Inuit home. The structure is composed of whale bone trusses, rock floors, and a moss and tundra roof, giving testimony to this people's resourcefulness in the harsh climate. The tunnel in the foreground was the entrance to the home. It was built lower than the floor to keep out drafts and snow. The Inuit lived warmly in these structures, cooking on the floor behind the entrance and sleeping on elevated shelves visible in the rear of the structure. A team of anthropologists from the Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto are excavating and preserving this ancient Inuit settlement of 12+ structures, some dating to 1200 AD. |  |
| The same structure seen from a different angle, looking out toward Barrow Strait. Although not visible in this picture, ringed seals on the beach basked in the sun. |  |
| This picture was not captured on Cornwallis Island, rather on Ellesmere Island. However, it shows geomorphology that is endemic to the Arctic: Pattern Ground. Repeated cycles of surface freezing and thawing actually forces rocks on the tundra to cluster in polygonal groups, creating a patterned grid on the surface. |  |
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