Forgotten World (201): Nunavut
It’s time once again for one of my regular weeks of postings in my long-running series called Forgotten World – a look at parts of the world that hardly feature in our media or thoughts. You can check the previous 200 entries here.
Nunavut covers 1,932,255 sq km (746,048 sq mi) of land and 160,935 sq km (62,137 sq mi) of 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 which belonged to the Northwest Territories. This makes it the fifth largest sub-national entity (or administrative division) in the world. If Nunavut were a country, it would rank 15th in area.
Nunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories in 1999 though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993. The creation of Nunavut – meaning “our land” in Inuktitut – resulted in the first major change to Canada’s map since the incorporation of the new province of Newfoundland in 1949. Despite its huge size, the territory has a population of a mere 32,000.