Redirected from Nunavut Territory
| |||||
Motto: Nunavut Sanginivut (Nunavut our strength) | |||||
Capital | Iqaluit | ||||
Area - Total - % fresh water | 1st largest (1st lgst terr.) 2 093 190 km² 7,5% | ||||
Population
- Total (2001) - Density | Ranked 13th
28 200 0,01/km² | ||||
Admittance into Confederation
- Date - Order |
1999 13 | ||||
Time zones | UTC -4,-5,-6,-7 *Southampton Island[?] does not observe DST |
||||
Postal information (http://www.canadapost.ca)
Postal abbreviation Postal code prefix | NU (temporarily NT) X |
||||
ISO 3166-2 | CA-NU | ||||
Parliamentary representation House seats Senate seats |
1 1 | ||||
Premier | Paul Okalik[?] | ||||
Commissioner | Peter T. Irniq[?] | ||||
Government of Nunavut (http://www.gov.nu.ca) |
Nunavut is Canada's newest territory. Formerly part of the vast Northwest Territories, Nunavut officially separated on April 1, 1999 via the Nunavut Act[?] and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act[?], though the actual boundaries were established as early as 1993.
The capital of Nunavut is Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay) on Baffin Island. Other major communities include Rankin Inlet[?] and Cambridge Bay[?]. Nunavut has a population of only about 27,000 (Nunavumiut, sg. Nunavumiuq) spread over an area the size of Western Europe.
Nunavut means our land in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit.
|
The recorded history of Nunavut began in 1576. Martin Frobisher, while leading an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, thought he had discovered gold ore in what is now known as Frobisher Bay on the coast of Baffin Island. The ore turned out to be worthless, but Frobisher made the first recorded European contact with the Inuit. The contact was hostile, with Frobisher capturing four Inuit people and bringing them back to England, where they quickly perished.
Other explorers in search of the elusive Northwest Passage followed in the 17th century, including Henry Hudson, William Baffin and Robert Bylot.
(and there were quite a few more after that. More needs to be said about various explorers and colonial history in Nunavut. But for now, let's make a jump into recent history)
In 1976, negotiations for a land claim agreement and the new territory between the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada[?] and the federal government began. In April 1982, a majority of Northwest Territories residents voted in favour of a division, and the federal government gave a conditional agreement seven months later. A land claims agreement was reached in September, 1992 and ratified by nearly 85% of the voters in Nunavut. In June 1993 the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act[?] and the Nunavut Act[?] were passed by the Canadian Parliament, and the transition was completed on April 1, 1999.
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.
See List of communities in Nunavut.
Canada | ||||
Alberta | B.C. | Manitoba | New Brunswick | Nfld.-Lab. |
Nova Scotia | Ontario | P.E.I. | Quebec | Saskatchewan |
N.W.T. | Nunavut | Yukon |
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump