Dundas Harbour

Dundas Harbour
Talluruti
Ghost town
Dundas Harbour is located in Nunavut
Dundas Harbour
Dundas Harbour
Dundas Harbour (Nunavut)
Coordinates: 74°32′N 82°23′W / 74.533°N 82.383°W / 74.533; -82.383 (Dundas Harbour (settlement))[1]
Country Canada
Province Nunavut
FoundedAugust 1924
Abandoned1951
Population
 • Total0

Dundas Harbour (Inuktitut: Talluruti, "a woman's chin with tattoos on it"[2]) is an abandoned settlement in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is located on Devon Island at the eastern shore of the waterway also named Dundas Harbour (74°33′N 82°30′W / 74.550°N 82.500°W / 74.550; -82.500 (Dundas Harbour (bay))[3]). Baffin Bay's Croker Bay is immediately to the west.

An outpost was established at the harbour in August 1924 as part of a government presence intended to curb foreign whaling and other activity. The Hudson's Bay Company leased the outpost in 1933. The following year, 52 Inuit were relocated from Kinngait (then called Cape Dorset) to Dundas Harbour but they returned to the mainland 13 years later.[4]

The abandoned settlement in Johnson Bay, Dundas Harbour (from near the cemetery)
Johnson Bay Cemetery, Dundas Harbour sits above the abandoned settlement. It contains the graves of two RCMP members.

Dundas Harbour was populated again in the late 1940s to maintain a patrol presence, but it was closed again in 1951 due to ice difficulties. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment[5] was moved to Craig Harbour on southern Ellesmere Island.[6]

Only the ruins of a few buildings remain, along with one of the northernmost cemeteries in Canada.[7]

  1. ^ "Dundas Harbour (settlement)". Geographical Names Data Base. Natural Resources Canada.
  2. ^ The Canadian Northwest Passage? Archived 2012-02-22 at the Wayback Machine Taissumani. Nunatsiaq News 2009-12-17 Kenn Harper
  3. ^ "Dundas Harbour (bay)". Geographical Names Data Base. Natural Resources Canada.
  4. ^ Alia, Valerie (2007). Names and Nunavut: culture and identity in Arctic Canada. Berghahn Series. Berghahn Books. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-84545-165-3.
  5. ^ Grant, Shelagh (2005). Arctic Justice: On Trial for Murder, Pond Inlet, 1923. McGill-Queen's Native and Northern Series. McGill-Queen's Press. p. 340. ISBN 0-7735-2929-2.
  6. ^ Tester, Frank J.; Peter Keith Kulchyski (1994). Tammarniit (mistakes): Inuit relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939-63. UBC Press. p. 122. ISBN 0-7748-0452-1.
  7. ^ RCMP, military honour early northern officers