Pond inlet
| Pond inlet | |||
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 Newly built Catholic Church in Pond Inlet after the devastating fire in 1994; on the opposite side of Eclipse Sound: Bylot Island |
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| Location in Nunavut | |||
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| State : |
 Canada
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| Territory : | Nunavut | ||
| Region: | Qikiqtaaluk | ||
| Coordinates : | 72 ° 42 ′ N , 77 ° 59 ′ W | ||
| Residents : | 1549 (as of 2011) | ||
 Pond Inlet against the backdrop of Bylot Island |
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Pond Inlet ( Inuktitut : Mittimatalik ), Nunavut Territory , is a settlement with around 1,300 inhabitants (93% of them Inuit ) located on the north coast of Baffin Island on the east bank of Eclipse Sound and the Pond Inlet inlet .
history
When the settlement emerged in the first half of the 20th century, it was given the same name as the inlet - Pond Inlet. The Inuit call the place Mittimatalik, "Mittimas Platz". Who Mittima is or was is unknown.
The area between the current settlements of Pond Inlet and Iglulik has been inhabited for about 4,000 years by people of the Dorset culture and then the Thule culture , the ancestors of today's Inuit, who call themselves “Tununirmiut” (after Tuniniq, “land of Face turns away from the sun ”). The inlet Pond Inlet, initially named Pond's Bay by the researcher John Ross after an English astronomer in 1818, connects the Eclipse Sound with Baffin Bay. After John Ross, there were more and more whaling ships, and in 1903 a whaling station was finally established here, but it was soon no longer profitable and was abandoned again in 1912.
Around 1850 the camp leader and shaman Qillarsuaq , fleeing from enemies, set out with 60 Inuit from the Tuniniq area via the islands of Bylot , Devon and Ellesmere to northern Greenland . This trip by the camp leader had a significant impact on the lives of the Polar Inuit , who had been isolated in North Greenland for more than a century , as it was when they became familiar with the latest Inuit technology. Since then there have been family ties between the Tununirmiut and the Polar Inuit living in the Thule area .
In 1912, three expeditions in search of gold came to the Pond Inlet region and, after a fruitless search, opened trading posts, which were taken over by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1921 . In 1929 a Roman Catholic and an Anglican mission station were established. The Catholic Church was rebuilt after the original church fell victim to a fire in 1994. The Oblate Father Guy Mary-Rousselière , who was also an archaeologist and anthropologist, was killed in the fire.
In the 1960s, the first school for the children living in the camps in the area was built. In 1996 a culture and library center was opened, which because of its external shape bears the name “Nattinnak Building” (Inuktitut for table-shaped iceberg).
tourism
Pond Inlet is probably one of the most beautifully situated settlements in the Arctic. Surrounded by the leading even in summer icebergs waters of Eclipse Sound and Inlet in which beluga whales (beluga whales), narwhals and sometimes bowhead whales frolic, the landscape of the twenty-five kilometers from rising out of the sea cliffs and glaciers, the Bylot Island , part of the Sirmilik National Park .
Cruise ships regularly come to Pond Inlet on their way through the Northwest Passage .
literature
- Miriam Dewar (Ed.): The Nunavut Handbook: Traveling in Canada's Arctic . Ayaya Marketing & Communications, Iqaluit / Ottawa 2004, ISBN 0-9736754-0-3 (English).
Web links
