Kangiqsujuaq
| Kangiqsujuaq | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Location in Quebec | |||
|
|||
| State : |
 Canada
|
||
| Province : | Quebec | ||
| Administrative region : | North du Quebec | ||
| MRC or equivalent : | Nunavik | ||
| Coordinates : | 61 ° 35 ′ N , 71 ° 56 ′ W | ||
| Residents : | 552 (as of 2006) | ||
| Time zone : | Eastern Time ( UTC − 5 ) | ||
Kangiqsujuaq (formerly Wakeham Bay ) is an Inuit settlement in the Nunavik region , administrative region of North du Québec , with 552 inhabitants (as of 2006). Kangiqsujuaq means "Great Bay"; the place is about 10 kilometers south of the Hudson Strait on the southeast bank of Wakeham Bay.
Relics from the time of the Dorset culture (from around 1200 years ago) and the Thule culture (from around 800 years ago) have been found in the region.
With the aim of establishing a trade route through the Hudson Bay to Europe, the steamship "Neptun", part of the Canadian Hudson Bay Expedition, reached the area around the present-day settlement in 1884, and immediately afterwards was called Aniuvarjuaq at the nearby Stupart Bay (by the Inuit , "Place where there is a lot of snow for water preparation") an ice and weather observation station was built. Soon afterwards there was a brisk bartering between the Inuit and the southern Canadians working at the station.
The bay was originally named Wakeham Bay after Captain William Wakeham, who came here on an expedition in 1897 to check the navigational safety of the Hudson Strait. The provincial government temporarily gave the settlement the former French name Sainte-Anne-de-Maricourt in 1961, until the final name Kangiqsujuaq was established when the settlement was raised to the rank of municipality.
From 1910 to 1936, the French trading company Révillon Frères maintained a trading post here. In 1914 the Hudson's Bay Company opened a competing branch and installed a fox farm in 1928, which they gave up again twelve years later (1940). In 1936 the Oblate Fathers set up a Roman Catholic mission station. From 1955 the current settlement was built. The first school started operating in 1960. In 1963 an Anglican mission station was built. At the end of the 1960s, the Inuit founded a cooperative and in 1970 opened a “Co-op Store”.
Of general economic interest are the rich mineral deposits in the Kangiqsujuaq region. The search for deposits began - initially irregularly - in the 1950s. Asbestos was mined at Purnituq in the 1970s and 1980s . A copper and nickel mine owned by the Société minière Raglan du Québec is currently in operation; around 15% of their workforce comes from Nunavik communities. Incidentally, the Inuit resident here exploit the shellfish deposits in Wakeham Bay in winter, skillfully exploiting the tides.
About 88 kilometers southwest of Kangiqsujuaq and not far from the Raglan Mine is a crater caused by the impact of a meteorite 1.4 million years ago, known by the Inuit as a pingualuit . In 2004 the area around the crater became the first Provincial Park of Nunavik and thus withdrawn from exploration for natural resources.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Inuit's risky mussel harvest under sea ice (English) , BBC News . January 25, 2011.