Nunavut - "Our Land"

Now that we have left Nunavut, here is some factual information about it that maybe we should have shared at the beginning of our year-long visit. The most stunning fact is how few people there are here, just 33,000 spread across a vast land the size of Western Europe.

On April 1, 1999, Canada's original Northwest Territory was divided. The easternmost portion became Nunavut. The word "Nunavut" means "Our Land" in Inuktitut, the primary language of its Aboriginal people, the Inuit, who represent 85% of Nunavut's residents.

Comprising most of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, about one fifth of the total landmass of Canada, Nunavut is the size of Western Europe. It is the largest yet least populated of all the provinces and territories in Canada, with a total area of 2,093,190 square kilometres (808,190 square miles) and a population of approximately 33,330 people — 84 percent Inuit. This works out to one person for every 65 square kilometres (25 square miles).

Nunavut is home to the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world, Alert, a military installation which is only 817 kilometres (508 miles) from the North Pole.

Nunavut has no road links to the south and with the exception of a 21 kilometre stretch between Arctic Bay and Nanisivik, no roads between communities either.

The Native people of Nunavut prefer to be known as Inuit, which means "people" in Inuktitut. One person is an Inuk. A person from Nunavut is a Nunavummiut.

There are four official languages in Nunavut — Inuktitut, English, French and Inuinnaqtun, which is a variant of the Inuit language spoken in the westernmost communities of the territory. Inuktitut is the mother tongue of 70 percent of Nunavummiut. English is the first language of 27 percent of the population, French and Inuinnaqtun about one and a half percent each.

Inuktitut began as a purely oral language yet today is is primarily written with a system of "syllabics" originally developed by Anglican missionaries for the Cree and adapted for Inuit at the beginning of the 19th century.

The Inuktitut word for 'thank you' is 'qujannamiik'.

The object on the Nunavut flag is an Inuksuk (Inukshuk in English), meaning "likeness of a person". It's a stone monument made in the shape of, or to indicate, a human form. These cairns are a common feature throughout Nunavut. Inuksuit (the pural of Inuksuk) serve a variety of purposes including; to guide hunters on their way home, to indicate where food was stored, to mark an area where significant events took place and to help hunt caribou herds.

Flag of Nunavut

In Inuinnaqtun, Cambridge Bay is called 'Iqaluktuuttiaq' because it is a 'good fishing place.' Arctic char here can grow larger than 30 pounds and are anadromous, which means they are born in fresh water, spend much of their lives feeding in the sea and return to fresh water to spawn. The migration of char up Nunavut rivers begins in late August. They spawn in rivers or inland lakes in September and October. The young hatch in late April and may spend four or five years in freshwater before joining adult char in their annual migration back to the ocean from early June to mid-July. Arctic char can live to 40 years old but the lifespan of most is around 20 years. Char are very similar to salmon and just as tasty, but, unlike salmon, they cannot leap into the air as they travel upstream.