Pond Inlet () is a small, predominantly Inuit community in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada, located on northern Baffin Island. For local Inuit the name of the place "is and always has been Mittimatalik." The Scottish explorer Sir John Ross had named an arm of the sea that separates Bylot Island from Baffin Island as Pond's Bay, and the hamlet now shares that name. On 29 August 1921, the Hudson's Bay Company opened its trading post near the Inuit camp and named it Pond Inlet, marking the expansion of its trading empire into the High Arctic.
At the 2021 Canadian census the population, which is predominantly Inuit, was 1,555, a change of from the 2016 census.
Pond Inlet, the largest community in northern Baffin Island—part of the Arctic Cordillera—with mountains visible from all sides, is called the "Jewels of the North". At the ice flow edge there is an abundance of wildlife, including polar bears, barren-ground caribou, Baffin Island wolves, Arctic foxes, ringed seal, and narwhals. It attracts hundreds of visitors each year, who travel by air or by cruise ship. The Nattinnak Visitors Centre on Tasiujaq (Eclipse Sound) which overlooks Bylot Island, showcases Pond Inlet artists. The Sirmilik National Park on Bylot Island, the Tamaarvik Territorial Park, and the Qilaukat Thule site are near the hamlet.
Geography
Mittimatalik, known in English as Pond Inlet, is located on the northerly tip of Baffin Island in the Lancaster Sound region on the east side of Eclipse Sound.
The region has one of Canada's most inhospitable climates—with long, dark winters and temperatures averaging (December to February, meteorological reckoning). By 2021, Pond Inlet with a population of 1,555, along with Clyde River with 1,181 and Qikiqtarjuaq with 593, comprised the population of the Arctic Cordillera—about 3,300 people. Most of the people who live in the region survive by hunting, fishing, and trapping.*Chernoff, M. N., H. R. Hovdebo, and J. Stuart-Smith. Eastern Canadian Cordillera and Arctic Islands An Aerial Reconnaissance. Ottawa: 24th International Geological Congress, 1972. Geological Survey of Canada. Cordillera and Pacific Margin Interior Plains and Arctic Canada. Geological Survey of Canada Current Research, 1998-A. 1998. Hall, John K. Arctic Ocean Geophysical Studies The Alpha Cordillera and Mendeleyev Ridge. Palisades, N.Y.: Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, Columbia University, 1970. Walker, Edward R. A Synoptic Climatology for Parts of the Western Cordillera. Montreal: McGill University, 1961.
Significant geographic features near Pond Inlet include its ice edge which attracts a diversity of wildlife, particularly ringed seals, Arctic cod, murres and some other sea birds that thrive there, because of its "greater access to preferred foods".
A wide arm of the sea separates Pond Inlet from Bylot Island, a large uninhabited island of . The waterways between Bylot Island and Baffin Island are Navy Board Inlet, which opens into Lancaster Sound and Tasiujaq, which opens to Baffin Bay. Navy Board Inlet is the entrance to the Northwest Passage. Tasiujaq separates Pond Inlet from Bylot Island and has a series of deeply cut inlets west of Pond Inlet, including Milne Inlet, a small inlet, flows south from Navy Board Inlet at the confluence of Tasiujaq. The Pond Inlet region, including Bylot Island, is covered by the Arctic Cordillera, a terrestrial ecozone in Canada, characterized by a vast, deeply dissected chain of mountain ranges. There are mountains visible from all sides of Pond Inlet. From the summit of Mount Herodier at , which is east of the hamlet, the entire area is visible. Inuit from Pond Inlet travel to the Island regularly and its mountains form a backdrop to the hamlet's landscape.
Bylot Island along with Sirmilik National Park, is a protected area. The Bylot Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary, which is across Tasiujaq from Pond Inlet, has been a federally protected area since 1962 and is the second largest Migratory Bird Sanctuary (MBS). It was created to protect the nesting grounds of thick-billed murre, black-legged kittiwake and greater snow goose.
In 2016, an Elder and a youth from Pond Inlet joined Parks Canada's archaeologists to excavate one of the sod houses at the Thule site, known as Qaiqsut, in Bylot Island's Sirmilik National Park—one of Canada's most northerly parks. The site, which still has a handful of sod houses, had been used by the ancestors of Inuit for centuries, and had also been used by Scottish whalers 200 years ago.
Mary River, with its fresh water lake, which is about south of Pond Inlet—where caribou graze in the summer season—was an annual meeting place for the semi-nomadic Inuit for hundreds of years.
Pond Inlet Inuit have names for about 150 geographic features in the area immediately surrounding the hamlet that have been added to detailed maps in a collaboration between the Inuit Heritage Trust Incorporated (IHTI) and Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office (CNGO). The sound which forms the entrance to the open sea west of the hamlet is called Tursukattak, or ᑐᕐᓱᑲᑦᑕᒃ in Inuktitut syllabics,—"heading west from a narrow passage to a large opening" as it resembles the narrow entrance of an igloo. One of the place names refers to Captain James Bannerman, a Scottish whaler of the 1875 British Arctic Expedition, whose great-grandson is a resident of Pond Inlet.
Demographics
In the 2021 Canadian census conducted by Statistics Canada, Pond Inlet had a population of 1,555 living in 365 of its 466 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 1,617. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.
Of the total population in 2021, about 49.8% were female and 50.2% male. There were 1,345 Indigenous peoples (1,335 Inuit and 10 First Nations) and 110 non-Indigenous people. Compared to the rest of Canada, Pond Inlet's population is fairly young with 36.7% of the population being under 15 compared to 16.3% for Canada as a whole. The average age of people in Pond Inlet is 26.6, compared to Nunavut at 28.3 and the general Canadian population at 41.9.
According to the Qikiqtani Truth Commission, in 2013, 1,549 people—92% of them Inuit—lived in Pond Inlet. President J. Okalik Eegeesiak
Pond Inlet's population in 1976 was 504 people, and within a radius, of what was to become the Mary River Mine, there were 2,209 people. By the 2021 census there were 6,670 people in the same area.
+ Panethnic groups in Pond Inlet (2001−2021)Panethnic group20212016201120062001 Indigenous 1,475 1,520 1,500 1,215 1,150 European 65 75 50 85 65 African 15 10 0 10 0 South Asian 0 10 0 10 0 East Asian 0 0 0 0 0 Southeast Asian 0 0 0 0 0 Middle Eastern 0 0 0 0 0 Latin American 0 0 0 0 0 Other/multiracial 0 0 10 0 10 Total responses 1,555 1,615 1,560 1,315 1,220 Total population 1,555 1,617 1,549 1,315 1,220
Wildlife By 2011, many Inuit continued to live off the land in the Pond Inlet area. Wildlife in the region includes caribou, polar bears, Arctic foxes, ermines, lemmings, and Arctic hares. The coastal waters have walrus, seals, beluga whales (white whale), and narwhals. A report on community histories, said that an important part of the traditional diet in Pond Inlet came from ringed seals.
A 1982 article in the journal Arctic based on 1979 studies of the Pond Inlet ice edge, observed the behaviours of northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis), black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla), thick-billed murres (Uria lomvia), and black guillemots (Cepphus grylle), narwhals (Monodon monoceros), beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas), Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida), and ringed seals (Pusa hispida). Researchers found that both ringed seals and Arctic cod preferred land fast ice and that the Arctic cod that remained close to the undersurface of land fast ice, were larger and older than those offshore.
The variety of wildlife so close to the hamlet is one of its tourist attractions.
Mittimatalik Hunters and Trappers Organization
Pond Inlet's Mittimatalik Hunters and Trappers Organization (MHTO) have been actively participating in discussions regarding Baffinland's Phase 2 Proposal for expansion of the Mary River project by submitting presentations to the Qikiqtani Inuit Association's (QIA). The Nunavut Impact Review Board was criticized for rushing through the process by limiting the number of questions each party could ask Baffinland. MHTO board member, elder and hunter Elijah Panipakoocho expressed frustration with the process. The MHTO and the Hamlet of Pond Inlet said that the NIRB process was not supporting Inuit interests. Panipakoocho said that now the caribou are gone, and the seal that they used to hunt in Milne Inlet during the fall freeze-up are no longer abundant. MHTO chairperson, Eric Ootoovak, said that "This project deserves and needs more work, and more attention, and that is what we bring to the table. More questions, not less, are absolutely necessary...Instead of developing more questions based on what we've heard, our technical advisor has spent two days trying to find ways to cut corners and limit our incredibly important questions." Milne Inlet, where Baffinalnd have their port, is a "small inlet" that "opens into Eclipse Sound, a primary summering area for Nunavut's largest population of narwhal. After years of negotiations, communities say they still haven't been given a clear picture of how the mine will impact Inuit land use and hunting rights for themselves and following generations."
Place name To the Inuit, the place "is and always has been Mittimatalik." The hamlet shares its name with an arm of the sea that separates Bylot Island from Baffin Island. The place name for the body of water, an arm of the ocean that separates Baffin Island from Bylot Island to the north – Pond's Bay – was chosen by the explorer John Ross in 1818 in honour of the English astronomer John Pond, at the time the sixth Astronomer Royal. The hamlet shares that English name, Pond Inlet, used by the early Scottish whalers and traders, the Sikaatsi. On 29 August 1921, when the Hudson's Bay Company opened its trading post near an Inuit camp called Pond's Inlet, they named the HBC post, Pond Inlet.Scottish explorer John Ross (1777–1856) with naming the body of water and arm of the sea between Bylot Island and Baffin Island—Pond Inlet—in his failed exploratory 1818 expedition organized by the British Admiralty to find the Northwest passage. There was no hamlet until the trading companies arrived much later in the 2oth century. In an Arctic whaling ship, the Ross produced a detailed map of the western coast of Greenland and the eastern coast of Baffin Island, naming dozens of capes, mountains, islands, and other geographical features after Scottish and English people and places. He named Pond Inlet after John Pond, a leading English astronomer who was Astronomer Royal from 1811 to 1835. During this first expedition to find the Passage, Ross became confused by a mirage of apparent mountains, at what he thought was the end of Lancaster Sound—a range he called "Croker Mountains"—and decided to turn back, much to the discouragement of Lieutenant William Edward Parry, who was the captain of the second ship in the 1818 expedition, the . Parry returned the next year and continued beyond the "Croker Hills" mountain mirage, and discovered the main axis of the Northwest Passage.More
Pond Inlet community histories
According to the 2013 Qikiqtani Truth Commission, the people of the region around Pond Inlet are known as Tununirmiut—"people of the shaded place" or Mittimatalingmiut—people of Mittimatalik." President J. Okalik Eegeesiak