Resolution Island is one of the many uninhabited Canadian Arctic islands in

Qikiqtaaluk Region The Qikiqtaaluk Region, Qikiqtani Region (Inuktitut syllabics: ᕿᑭᖅᑖᓗᒃ ) or Baffin Region is the easternmost, northernmost, and southernmost administrative region of Nunavut, Canada. Qikiqtaaluk is the traditional Inuktitut name f ...

Nunavut Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' ...

. It is a

Baffin Island Baffin Island (formerly Baffin Land), in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, is the largest island in Canada and the fifth-largest island in the world. Its area is , slightly larger than Spain; its population was 13,039 as of the 2021 Canadia ...

offshore island located in Davis Strait. It has an area of . The

Lower Savage Islands The Lower Savage Islands are an uninhabited offshore island group of Baffin Island, located in the Arctic Archipelago in the territory of Nunavut. The islands lie in the Gabriel Strait, an arm of Davis Strait, northwest of Resolution Island, ...

lie between Resolution Island and Baffin Island, while Graves Strait separates Resolution Island from the more northern Edgell Island.

History

English explorer

Martin Frobisher Sir Martin Frobisher (; c. 1535 – 22 November 1594) was an English seaman and privateer who made three voyages to the New World looking for the North-west Passage. He probably sighted Resolution Island near Labrador in north-eastern Canada ...

landed on the island on July 28, 1576, while on a voyage to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. However it appears to have been named Resolution in 1612 by

Sir Thomas Button Sir Thomas Button (died April, 1634) was a Welsh officer of the Royal Navy, notable as an explorer who in 1612–1613 commanded an expedition that unsuccessfully attempted to locate explorer Henry Hudson and to navigate the Northwest Passage. ...

, after his own ship, the ''Resolution''.''The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull and Captain Thomas James of Bristol in search of a North-west passage in 1631-32'', edited by

Miller Christy A miller is a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalent ...

, Hakluyt society, London, 1894, p.165 fn.1 The island was home to an American military base, now CFS Resolution Island, that became operational in 1954 as part of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line. The base was vacated in 1973 and turned over to the Canadian government in 1974. The Canadian cargo ship named "MINNA" was wrecked on the east side of the island, on 18 August 1974. The vessel was then under charter by the Bedford Institute of Oceanography and was doing scientific surveys at the time of the accident. Badly damaged, the ship's crew and scientific equipment were removed. Bad weather swept the vessel in deeper waters where she sank on October 2, 1974. This vessel with a length of 275 feet's and displacement of 4,280 tons was based in Halifax and was on regular charter with the BIO for hydrographic surveys on the Labrador Coast and Hudson Strait. The MINNA was built in 1962 and had a crew of 21 men and 18 scientists. It was during site investigations between 1987 and 1990 that contamination at the site was first discovered. The contamination originates largely from spills from the radar equipment, which used polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as insulators. Other pollutants include unused transformer fluids, hydrocarbons,

asbestos Asbestos () is a naturally occurring fibrous silicate mineral. There are six types, all of which are composed of long and thin fibrous crystals, each fibre being composed of many microscopic "fibrils" that can be released into the atmosphere b ...

and

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in the buildings and sprinkled throughout the site. Resolution Island has been identified as having the highest level of PCB contamination of all former military sites that fall under Indian and Northern Affairs Canada’s (INAC) responsibility in the North. In 1993 and 1994, an environmental site assessment of the area was completed. As a result, temporary barriers were placed across drainage paths to stop the migration of PCBs into the water. Further investigations were done and, in 1997, INAC initiated remediation work with Qikiqtaaluk Corporation (QC). A large-scale remediation plan was developed, in cooperation with Environment and Climate Change Canada, QC and

Queen's University Queen's or Queens University may refer to: *Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada *Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK **Queen's University of Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) (1918–1950) **Queen's University of Belfast ...

. Steps were taken at that time to ensure that the contaminants were not posing a risk to humans and wildlife.

References

{{Authority control Islands of Baffin Island Islands of Hudson Strait Uninhabited islands of Qikiqtaaluk Region Former populated places in the Qikiqtaaluk Region