Canadian Arctic Archipelago

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The Canadian Arctic Archipelago, also known as just the Arctic Archipelago, is an archipelago north of the Canadian mainland in the Arctic. Situated in the northern extremity of North America and covering about , this group of 36,563 islands comprises much of the territory of Northern Canada – most of Nunavut and part of Northwest Territories.

The archipelago extends some longitudinally and from the mainland to Cape Columbia, the northernmost point on Ellesmere Island. It is bounded on the west by the Beaufort Sea; on the north by the Arctic Ocean; on the east by Greenland, Baffin Bay and Davis Strait; and on the south by Hudson Bay and the Canadian mainland. The various islands are separated from each other and the continental mainland by a series of waterways collectively known as the Northwestern Passages. Two large peninsulas, Boothia and Melville, extend northward from the mainland.

The archipelago contains 94 major islands (greater than ), including three of the world's ten largest islands, and 36,469 minor islands. The sizeable islands of the archipelago (over , in order of descending size) are:

Name	Location^*	Area	Area rank		Population (2001)
Name	Location^*	Area	World	Canada	Population (2001)
Baffin Island	NU		5	1	9,563
Victoria Island	NT, NU		9	2	1,707
Ellesmere Island	NU		10	3	168
Banks Island	NT		24	5	114
Devon Island	NU		27	6	0
Axel Heiberg Island	NU		32	7	0
Melville Island	NT, NU		33	8	0
Southampton Island	NU		34	9	721
Prince of Wales Island	NU		40	10	0
Somerset Island	NU		46	12	0
Bathurst Island	NU		54	13	0
Prince Patrick Island	NT		55	14	0
King William Island	NU		61	15	960
Ellef Ringnes Island	NU		69	16	0
Bylot Island	NU		72	17	0

^* NT = Northwest Territories, NU = Nunavut

After Greenland, the archipelago is the world’s largest high-Arctic land area. The climate of the islands is arctic, and the terrain consists of tundra except in mountainous areas. Most of the islands are uninhabited; human settlement is extremely thin and scattered, being mainly coastal Inuit settlements on the southern islands.

British claims on the islands were based on the explorations in the 1570s by Martin Frobisher. Canadian sovereignty, originally (1870-80) only over island portions that drained into Foxe Basin, Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait, over all of them was not established until the 1880 transfer by Britain to Canada of the remaining islands; the District of Franklin was established in 1895, which comprised almost all of the archipelago; the district was dissolved upon the creation of Nunavut in 1999. Canada claims sovereignty in a sector continuing to the North Pole, a claim that is not universally recognized. In addition, Canada claims all the waterways of the Northwestern Passages as Canadian Internal Waters; however the United States and most other maritime countries view these as international waters. Disagreement over the passages' status has raised Canadian concerns about environmental enforcement, national security, and general sovereignty. Hans Island, in the Nares Strait east of Ellesmere Island, is a territory currently contested between Canada and Denmark.

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Map with links to islands

Islands not on map

References

Marsh, James H., ed. 1988. " Arctic Archipelago" The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Hurtig Publishers.

Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Map with links to islands

References

Further reading

See also