Kuujjuarapik
| Kuujjuarapik | |||
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 Kuujjuarapik-Whapmagoostui |
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| Location in Quebec | |||
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| State : |
 Canada
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| Province : | Quebec | ||
| Administrative region : | North du Quebec | ||
| MRC or equivalent : | Nunavik | ||
| Coordinates : | 55 ° 17 ′ N , 77 ° 46 ′ W | ||
Kuujjuarapik ("small significant river" in Inuktitut ) is the southernmost settlement of the Nunavik region , administrative region of North du Québec .
It is inhabited by around 650 Inuit , who share the site with the Cree Indian settlement Whapmagoostui ("place of the white whales" on Cree), which has around 750 inhabitants . The municipality used to have other names: “Poste-de-la-Baleine” in French and “Great Whale River” in English.
Kuujjuarapik is located on the east coast of the Hudson Bay in the mouth of the Grande rivière de la Baleine .
Ancestors of both the Inuit and the Cree Indians lived here about 2,800 years ago. In the 18th century, the first white hunters came to the region and set up camps at Lac Guillaume-Delisle , Petite rivière de la Baleine and Grande rivière de la Baleine. The Hudson's Bay Company set up a "Great Whale River" trading post at the present-day settlement in 1820; Besides the usual trade in furs, products obtained from whale hunting were also traded here. In 1882 an Anglican and in 1890 a Roman Catholic mission station were established. The Canadian federal government built a weather station in 1895, and an infirmary followed in the first decades of the 20th century. However, the actual construction of the Kuujjuarapik settlement did not begin until the late 1930s.
During the Second World War , the US Air Force maintained a military base and runway here - facilities that were transferred to the Canadian state in 1948. In the second half of the 1950s, the base was included in the line of military defense radar stations of the " Mid-Canada Line ", which stretched from 1955 from the Atlantic along the 55th parallel to Hudson Bay.
Kuujjuarapik experienced a population decline in 1985 when many families feared the negative effects of the Grande Baleine hydropower project and moved to Umiujaq , an Inuit settlement about 160 kilometers north of Kuujjuarapik.
A special attraction of Kuujjuarapik is an old church with a fresco by Eddy Witaluktuk showing Christ walking across the waters of the Grande rivière de la Baleine, as well as a very nice collection of Inuit sculptures and paintings by Eddy Witaluktuk in the Asimautaq school.
A little north of Kuujjuarapik are the animal-rich Manitounuk Islands with striking rock formations characteristic of the east coast of the Hudson Bay, the so-called Hudsonian cuestas , and 12 kilometers up the Grande rivière de la Baleine you can hike the breathtaking Amitapanuch Falls.