Igloolik

Part of the town, taken in August 2002

Igloolik, (Syllabics: ᐃᒡᓗᓕᒃ, sometimes spelled Iglulik), is an Inuit community in Nunavut, northern Canada. Because it is on a small island in Foxe Basin that is very close to the Melville Peninsula (and to a lesser degree, Baffin Island), it is often thought to be on the peninsula. The name "Igloolik" means "there is an igloo here" in Inuktitut and the residents are called Iglulingmiut (~miut - "people of"). The 2008 Rand McNally Road Atlas shows a new name of Iglulik, but its status as official is not known.

After the sun has gone below the horizon

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Information about the area’s earliest inhabitants comes mainly from numerous archeological sites on the island; some dating back more than 4000 years. First contact with Europeans came when British Navy ships HMS Fury and HMS Hecla, under the command of Captain William Edward Parry, wintered in Igloolik in 1822.

The Igloolik Return of the Sun festival

The island was visited in 1867 and 1868 by the American explorer Charles Francis Hall in his search for survivors of the lost Franklin Expedition. In 1913, Alfred Tremblay, a French-Canadian prospector with Captain Joseph Bernier’s expedition to Pond Inlet, extended his mineral exploration overland to Igloolik, and in 1921 a member of Knud Rasmussen's Fifth Thule Expedition visited the island.

The old stone church, photo taken August 2002, was torn down in 2006

The first permanent presence by southerners in Igloolik came with the establishment of a Roman Catholic Mission in the 1930s. By the end of the decade the Hudson's Bay Company had also set up a post on the island.

Non-indigenous establishments, such as RCMP stations, day schools, and clinics, were here before they came to be in surrounding communities.

In anthropology, the Iglulik Inuit are usually considered to be not just the Iglulingmiut, but also those Inuit on northern Baffin Island, on Southampton Island, and in the Melville Peninsula.

An ancient legend from the Igloolik area was adapted by Zacharias Kunuk into the award-winning Canadian film Atanarjuat in 2001. In 2004 Isuma produced the film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen which was released in September 2006 after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival.

As of the 2006 census the population was 1,538 an increase of 19.6% from the 2001 census.

Population

The Igloolik Research Centre

The growth of the Iglulingmiut Population:

• 146 (1822)
• 485 (1963)
• 680 (1967)
• 867 (1972)
• 1,174 (1996)
• 1,286 (2001)
• 1,538 (2006)

See also

• Enoki Kunuk
• Igloolik Airport

References

69°22′34″N 081°47′58″W