Bathurst Inlet, (

Inuinnaqtun Inuinnaqtun (; natively meaning ''like the real human beings/peoples''), is an indigenous Inuit language. It is spoken in the central Canadian Arctic. It is related very closely to Inuktitut, and some scholars, such as Richard Condon, believe th ...

: ''Qingaut'' Kingaok,

Inuktitut syllabics Inuktitut syllabics ( iu, ᖃᓂᐅᔮᖅᐸᐃᑦ, qaniujaaqpait, or , ) is an abugida-type writing system used in Canada by the Inuktitut-speaking Inuit of the territory of Nunavut and the Nunavik and Nunatsiavut regions of Quebec and Labra ...

: ᕿᙵᐅᓐ), is a small

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

community located in

Bathurst Inlet Bathurst Inlet, officially Kiluhiqtuq, is a deep inlet located along the northern coast of the Canadian mainland, at the east end of Coronation Gulf, into which the Burnside and Western rivers empty. The name, or its native equivalent ''Kingo ...

in the

Kitikmeot Region Kitikmeot Region (; Inuktitut: ''Qitirmiut'' ) is an administrative region of Nunavut, Canada. It consists of the southern and eastern parts of Victoria Island with the adjacent part of the mainland as far as the Boothia Peninsula, together ...

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'' ...

, Canada. The Inuit name for the community is ''Kingaun'' (old orthography) or ''Qingaut'' (new orthography), meaning ''nose mountain'', which refers to a hill close to the community. Thus, the people of the area are referred to as "Kingaunmiut" (''miut'' - people of). The traditional language of the area was Inuinnaqtun and is written using the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

rather than the syllabics of the

Inuktitut Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...

writing system. Like

Kugluktuk Kugluktuk (, ; Inuktitut syllabics: ; ), formerly known as Coppermine until 1 January 1996, is a hamlet located at the mouth of the Coppermine River in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada, on Coronation Gulf, southwest of Victoria Island. I ...

Cambridge Bay Cambridge Bay (Inuinnaqtun: ''Iqaluktuuttiaq'' Inuktitut: ᐃᖃᓗᒃᑑᑦᑎᐊᖅ; 2021 population 1,760; population centre 1,403) is a hamlet located on Victoria Island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada. It is the largest settl ...

and

Umingmaktok Umingmaktok (Inuinnaqtun: ''Umingmaktuuq'', "he or she caught a muskox") is a now abandoned settlement located in Bathurst Inlet in the Kitikmeot of the Canadian territory of Nunavut. The community was previously known as Bay Chimo and the Inui ...

syllabics are rarely seen and used mainly by the Government of Nunavut. Bathurst Inlet is the traditional birthing grounds of a "key northern species", the large, migratory Bathurst herd of

barren-ground caribou The barren-ground caribou (''Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus''; but subject to a recent taxonomic revision. See Reindeer: Taxomony.) is a subspecies of the reindeer (or the caribou in North America) that is found in the Canadian territories of ...

. Over millennia, the Inuit,

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

and

Métis The Métis ( ; Canadian ) are Indigenous peoples who inhabit Canada's three Prairie Provinces, as well as parts of British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United States. They have a shared history and culture which derives ...

depended on the Bathurst Inlet herd for survival.Bathurst Herd
Government of the Northwest Territories

History

The first Europeans known to have visited the area was during the first expedition of

John Franklin Sir John Franklin (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. After serving in wars against Napoleonic France and the United States, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and through ...

in 1821. There was little outside contact until 1936 when both the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and the

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

(HBC) arrived. Although, the Hudson's Bay Company abandoned the site in 1964 (for

) the Inuit decided to remain in the area and continue the traditional lifestyle. During the early 1960s, the area was visited by Glen Warner, a sergeant with the

Royal Canadian Mounted Police The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal police, federal and national police service of ...

. Warner, along with his wife Trish, purchased both the mission house and the HBC post which they turned into the "Bathurst Inlet Lodge". It is operated today as a joint venture between the Warners and the Kapolaks, and is open during the short Arctic summer. The lodge is a popular destination for tourists who wish to see a more traditional type Inuit lifestyle and wildlife such as

fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

es,

seals Seals may refer to: * Pinniped, a diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals, many of which are commonly called seals, particularly: ** Earless seal, or "true seal" ** Fur seal * Seal (emblem), a device to impress an emblem, used as a means of a ...

Arctic char The Arctic char or Arctic charr (''Salvelinus alpinus'') is a cold-water fish in the family Salmonidae, native to alpine lakes and arctic and subarctic coastal waters. Its distribution is Circumpolar North. It spawns in freshwater and populatio ...

and

muskox The muskox (''Ovibos moschatus'', in Latin "musky sheep-ox"), also spelled musk ox and musk-ox, plural muskoxen or musk oxen (in iu, ᐅᒥᖕᒪᒃ, umingmak; in Woods Cree: ), is a hoofed mammal of the family Bovidae. Native to the Arctic, i ...

. Also in the area is the Wilberforce Falls, the highest waterfall above the

Arctic Circle The Arctic Circle is one of the two polar circles, and the most northerly of the five major circles of latitude as shown on maps of Earth. Its southern equivalent is the Antarctic Circle. The Arctic Circle marks the southernmost latitude at w ...

. Like other communities in Nunavut, the only access is by aircraft. Although most tourists arrive from

Yellowknife Yellowknife (; Dogrib: ) is the capital, largest community, and only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the ...

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...

, it is possible to charter an aircraft from

. The community has no local phone service and contact with the outside world is maintained by

satellite phone A satellite telephone, satellite phone or satphone is a type of mobile phone that connects to other phones or the telephone network by radio through orbiting satellites instead of terrestrial cell sites, as cellphones do. The advantage of a sa ...

. Like its sister community, Umingmaktok, schooling is provided by flying the students to Cambridge Bay and returning them for Christmas and the summer. Dr. L.H. Vashon, Dr. Rosalie Garcia, and Dr. Carl Smith visited Bathurst Inlet and the surrounding areas in 1993 to study the

Casimir effect In quantum field theory, the Casimir effect is a physical force acting on the macroscopic boundaries of a confined space which arises from the quantum fluctuations of the field. It is named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir, who pr ...

Demographics

In the

2021 Canadian census The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sl ...

conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...

, Bathurst Inlet had a population of 0 living in 0 of its 0 total private dwellings, no change from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Bathurst herd

Bathurst Inlet is the traditional birthing grounds of the migratory Bathurst herd of

. The herd had experienced a rapid decline from 186,000 animals in 2003 to "approximately 16,000-22,000 animals" in 2015. The herd migrates from the birthing grounds to their winter grounds which extends from southern and central Northwest Territories (NWT). In some years, the herd winters as "far south as northern Saskatchewan." According to Environment and Natural Resources (ENR), "The Bathurst Herd are barren-ground caribou, a key northern species. They have shaped the cultural identity of

, Inuit and

peoples over millennia through mutual relationships built on respect." The Bathurst herd was the lifeblood of the Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation in the N.W.T., but by 2017, they faced "a complete ban on hunting from the Bathurst caribou herd."

Sabina gold and silver project

With hopes of more jobs and the guarantee of state-of-the-art protection for the Bathurst caribou, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association among others, have agreed to the gold mine proposal by Vancouver-based Sabina Gold and Silver in the final hearings. The mine will be

open-pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock (geology), rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a Borrow pit, b ...

and underground and will be located about south of Bathurst Inlet. Sabina's Matthew Pickard said, "Our objective is to have no impact on caribou herds as a result of this project." According to the CBC, the "proposed mine lies on the eastern fringe of the Bathurst caribou range and in the midst of the range of the Beverly/Ahiak herd, but does not significantly infringe on the calving or post-calving grounds of either herd."

Gallery

File:Bathurst Inlet 1998-07-11.jpg, Bathurst Inlet: Inuit settlement and naturalists' lodge (July 1998) File:Bathurst Inlet 1.jpg, Looking towards Bathurst Inlet from the landing strip

References

External links

Government of Nunavut
{{Authority control Ghost towns in Nunavut Hudson's Bay Company trading posts in Nunavut Populated places in the Kitikmeot Region Road-inaccessible communities of Nunavut