What’s In a Name?
RESOLUTE BAY, NUNAVUT, CANADA – Resolute is not just a name; it’s an approach to thinking and acting. If you look in the dictionary, the definition says: “characterized by firmness and determination.” How else could you describe a place where the average annual temperature is -16ºC (3ºF), the nearest hospital is 1,550 kilometers away, the Sun doesn’t rise for three months, and hungry polar bears occasionally hang out on the edges of your village?
The Hamlet of Resolute Bay—known in Inuktitut as Qausuittuq (cow-sweet-took), or "place with no dawn"—is home to roughly 235 permanent residents, with about 20 more who come and go from the town regularly for work (like the staff of the Narwhal, described in day 8 of our journal). Resolute is situated high in the Canadian Arctic on Cornwallis Island, north of Barrow Strait. The hamlet was established in 1947, first as a military airstrip and weather station. Then the government forcibly moved citizens from southern Nunavut and northern Quebec to Resolute in order to establish Canadian sovereignty over the region—that is, to show the world that the region is for the Canadian people and not open to claims by other countries.
Read more about our adventure in the slideshow below. Can't see the slideshow? Get the Flash plug in »
Note to Readers – Thanks for following our Arctic adventure. Chris and I are not going to make it to the North Pole this year, as the conditions of ice and weather have made it impossible for the North Pole Environmental Observatory (NPEO) program to safely take more people to the Pole. The season for ice camps ends with the beginning of May, and we’ve run out of time. Today will be our last dispatch from the Canadian Arctic, though we will continue to find more stories and check in with our two colleagues who did make it to the North Pole. Check this site again next week for an update about the 2007 Borneo North Pole ice camp and NPEO instrument deployment.
