The Nunavatu region
Nunavut is the largest and newest of the territories of Canada; it was separated officially from the vast Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999 via the
Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries were established in 1993. The creation of Nunavut resulted in the first
major change to Canada's map since the incorporation of the new province of Newfoundland including Labrador) in 1949.
The capital, Iqaluit (formerly "Frobisher Bay") on Baffin Island, in the east, was chosen by the 1995 capital plebiscite. Other major communities include
the regional centres of Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay. Nunavut also includes Ellesmere Island to the north, as well as the eastern and southern portions
of Victoria Island in the west. Nunavut is both the least populated and the largest of the provinces and territorities of Canada. It has a population of
only 29,474 spread over an area the size of Western Europe. If Nunavut were a sovereign nation, it would be the least densely populated in the world:
Nearby Greenland, for example, has almost the same area and twice the population.
Nunavut means 'our land' in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit. Its inhabitants are called Nunavummiut, singular Nunavummiuq. Along with Inuktitut,
Inuinnaqtun, English, and French are also official languages.
The territory covers about 1.9 million square kilometres of land and water in Northern Canada including part of the mainland, most of the Arctic
Archipelago, and all of the islands in Hudson Bay, James Bay, and Ungava Bay (including the Belcher Islands) which belonged to the Northwest Territories.
This makes it the fifth largest subnational entity (statoid) in the world. If Nunavut were a country, it would rank 13th in area, after the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. Nunavut has land borders with the Northwest Territories on several islands as well as the mainland, a border with Manitoba to the
south of the Nunavut mainland, and a tiny land border with Newfoundland and Labrador on Killiniq Island. It also shares an aquatic border with the
provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba.
The creation of Nunavut created Canada's only "four corners", at the intersection of the boundaries of Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Manitoba, and
Saskatchewan, at 60°00' north, 102°00' west, on the southern shore of Kasba Lake. This is not the tourist spot it might be, as it is extremely remote and
inaccessible. Nevertheless there is a marker (albeit an out-of-date one) at the point, and some have made the trek..............
Adopted from and read more at:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunavut |
