University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository University of Calgary Press University of Calgary Press Open Access Books 2016-02 Baffin Island: Field Research and High Arctic Adventure, 1961-1967 Ives, Jack D. University of Calgary Press Ives, J.D. "Baffin Island: Field Research and High Arctic Adventure, 1961-1967." Canadian history and environment series; no. 18. University of Calgary Press, Calgary, Alberta, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/51093 book http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca BAFFIN ISLAND: Field Research and High Arctic Adventure, 1961–1967 by Jack D. Ives ISBN 978-1-55238-830-3 THIS BOOK IS AN OPEN ACCESS E-BOOK. It is an electronic version of a book that can be purchased in physical form through any bookseller or on-line retailer, or from our distributors. 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Acknowledgement: We acknowledge the wording around open access used by Australian publisher, re.press, and thank them for giving us permission to adapt their wording to our policy http://www.re-press.org chapter 1 B Baffin Island A The Place and the Research This chapter provides a framework for the main narrative that follows. It includes a brief overview of the physi- cal geography, notes on early exploration, and an outline of the relatively modest research accomplished prior to the Geographical Branch enterprise. It also outlines the early progress in naming the island’s geographical fea- tures, bearing in mind that this “anglo” nomenclature usually bypassed the Inuit place names that were based on an oral tradition and were at the time somewhat inaccessible to us. The chapter concludes with a summary of the initial field research objectives. General geography and early history Baffin Island (Map 1)—the fifth largest island in the world—is Canada’s most extensive island. From the southern tip, it extends north-northwest more than 1,600 kilometres between latitudes 62° and 74° north. Its narrow “waist” stretches about 320 kilometres across from Baffin Bay to Foxe Basin. Lying well north of the treeline, the island is fully Arctic; the Arctic Circle cuts across its southern third. In the 1960s, its population was a scant few thousand, principally Inuit living in small coastal settlements of several hundred people, many of whom still travelled to spring and summer hunting and fishing encampments. Frobisher Bay (Iqaluit) was the main administrative centre. Today it is the capital of Canada’s newest territory, Nunavut, but in the 1960s it was still a part of the Northwest Territories. From a topographical point of view, Baffin Island can be described as the mirror image of the Scandinavian peninsula (Norway and Sweden), although situated about three degrees of latitude farther north. The very sig- nificant differences in climate, vegetation, and general habitability between the two land masses, however, are a reflection of their respective locations on opposite sides of the North Atlantic. On the Scandinavian side, the North Atlantic Drift, an extension of the warm Gulf Stream, keeps the far north of Norway (to 71° N) open all winter. However, the spectacular mountain and fiord landscape of Norway’s northwest coast is rivalled by Baffin Island’s northeast coast, with its many summits rising precipitously to more than 1,500 metres above sea level. (Fig. 1) 7 MAP 1: 70°W MAJOR ROUTES BY AIR AND SEA: OTTAWA - FIELD AREA Part of Eastern Canada B A F F I N Commercial airline ights showing the location of Aircraft charter ights Baffin Island, the Arctic B A B A Y Government icebreaker Circle, and the DEW F general route F Line, as well as the DEW I LIN N G main connecting routes E Inugsuin Base R Hall Fox-2 I between Ottawa and D E A Beach Hall S R L E the field area contact CT Beach IC A A CI N sites, close to latitude RC N LE L F D V 70° north, and the O X E A B I N generalized icebreaker A S I N D route travelled in 1966 S and 1967 (see inset key). S Frobisher T R H A U D S I O N T B AVA A U N G Y T AY o B r n R g O a A D t R Chimo B M L A t n s A . S E Scheerville Q U 50°N E B E C 50°N Sept-Îles Québec Ottawa Montréal 0 100 200 KM. 70°W MAP 1 8 BAFFIN ISLAND | Jack D. Ives Numerous glaciers and ice caps mantle the coast- its northern part was still known as Cockburn Land al mountains of Baffin Island from which the land and was believed to be a separate island.3 slopes down gradually southwestward to a broad, The next sequence of European place names4 can gently rolling inland plateau. The surface of the pla- be largely attributed to the activities of archaeologists teau itself continues to fall southwestward to the ex- and anthropologists in the late nineteenth century and tensive lowlands and low islands that form the east- the first half of the twentieth; thus, we have features ern margins of the often ice-choked Foxe Basin. An named for Hantsch, Boas, Rowley, Bray, and Soper, unusual feature of the north-central interior is the as well as several others proposed by the Danish Fifth Barnes Ice Cap, more than 600 metres thick and 145 Thule Expedition of 1921–1924 (Mathiassen, 1933). kilometres long, which was suspected to be a relic of Geographers and geologists received their share of the Laurentide Ice Sheet of the last ice age (Baird & recognition slightly later, either directly (Baird Pen- Ward, 1952; Goldthwait, 1951). insula, Longstaff Bluff) or indirectly according to In 1961, Baffin Island could be classed as lit- their Scottish or Cambridge university derivations, tle-known despite its immense size. Major islands in such as Cambridge Fiord, Clyde Inlet, Buchan Gulf, Foxe Basin, such as Prince Charles and Air Force is- Scott Inlet, the Bruce Mountains, Rannoch Arm, lands, and sections of the west coast were discovered Royal Society Fiord (Wordie, 1938).5 The Scottish or mapped only as recently as 1948, during RCAF whalers of the nineteenth century penetrated many air photography operations mounted after the Second of the eastern fiords, although their discoveries were World War. The island’s interior had been traversed usually kept as commercial secrets. Nevertheless, lat- rarely, although for centuries Inuit caribou-hunting er admirers of their exploits immortalized Peter Pond parties had crossed between Pond Inlet and north- (Pond Inlet, strait, and settlement) and William Pen- eastern Foxe Basin in late winter and early spring.1 ny (Penny Ice Cap). It was the Wordie Expedition of 1937, however, that supported the climbing exploit that led to the first distant sighting from a moun- Explorers and place names taintop of what was later named the Barnes Ice Cap. In 1950, P. D. Baird, as leader of the Arctic Institute The southwest coast of Greenland was settled more of North America (AINA) expedition to the ice cap, than a thousand years ago by Icelandic farmers and proposed the name in honour of McGill University seafarers (Vikings) who were undoubtedly aware of Professor of Physics Howard T.