Arctic Canada Land Area 2 million square miles Regions Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Yukon Population 100,000 Indigenous Groups Canadian Inuit, Athapaskan, Iñupiaq Languages Inuktitut, Inupik, Inupiaq Govt. Provincial, Parliament Mineral Resources Gold, molybd, diamonds, petroleum Largest City Whitehorse (pop. 20,000) Economy Fishing, hunting, tourism, mining Highest Point Mt. Logan (6,050 meters) Free E-Newsletter Receive Arctic News, Weather and Travel Information Click Here! Did you know? Both the northern portion of Ontario and Manitoba support large populations of polar bears. The population of Nunavut is 80% indigenous people. The name "Yukon" is derived from the Athapaskan word "yuchoo" which means 'great river'. Between 1897 and 1904 over $100 million in gold was recovered from the creek gravels of the Yukon.

Arctic Canada

A land of vast distances, scenic beauty, and rich natural resources, the Canadian Arctic stretches almost 5000 miles from east to west. From dense boreal forest to frozen archipelago, the Canadian Arctic is quite varied. It consists of three main territories: The Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and the Yukon but also extends southward along the the Hudson Bay into northern portions of Manitoba and Ontario and east into Northern Quebec and Labrador.

At the westernmost boundary of Canada's mainland Arctic is the Yukon Plateau, consisting of rolling uplands with valleys and isolated mountains. The Yukon is basically a triangular wedge between Alaska and the Northwest Territories bordered by British Columbia on the south and the Beaufort Sea on the north. The Wrangell-St. Elias mountain range is one of the more prominent features of the landscape along with several other mountain ranges. The Yukon River flows 2,200 miles from northwestern British Columbia through Whitehorse to its delta in southwestern Alaska. The Yukon is a land ranging from snow and tundra to deep forests and mountain meadows and includes a pocket desert. Mount Logan, Canada's highest peak, at 6,050 meters, is located in southwestern Yukon.

Southwest of the Yukon plateau are the Coast Mountains with extensive glaciers. To the northeast of are the Mackenzie Mountains. These mountain ranges give way to the interior lowlands covered by extensive wetlands and transected by the Mackenzie River. Here, the Arctic climate becomes more pronounced because of the cold air moving down from the Arctic Ocean. Most of the ground is permanently frozen. The large Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes extend from the interior lowland eastward into the Canadian Shield. The shield continues to the east coast and contains numerous lakes and the vast expanse of Hudson Bay.

Canada's northernmost area is the world's largest archipelago, with 20 large and many smaller islands, some of which are covered by extensive glaciers. The archipelago starts with flat to rolling plains in the west (Banks, Melville, Victoria, Bathurst, and Prince of Wales Islands), building up to rugged, ice-capped mountains in the northeast (Baffin, Devon, Axel Heiberg, and Ellesmere Islands) toward Greenland. The northernmost land is Ellesmere Island, where the Agassiz ice cap covers much of the central part of the island. The fjords and straits between the islands are often blocked by pack ice.

Much of the Northwest territories lies on the Canadian Shield (a geologic formation of some of the oldest rock on Earth). The shield is a vast glaciated plain dotted with lakes, taiga forests, with tundra being the predominant ecosystems. The mighty Mackenzie River flows 1000 miles from the Great Slave Lake in the southeast to Beaufort Sea near Inuvik. Its mouth features one of the world's largest deltas, with myriad channels and islands occupying nearly 7,000 square miles.

A significant issue affecting northern Canada is the April 1999 creation of the new territory of Nunavut, which means 'our land' in the Inuit language. Carved out of the central and eastern portions of the Northwest Territories, this vast expanse of northern Canada north of Manitoba and east of Hudson's Bay, includes the Arctic and non-arctic Islands to the east. Containing almost 1 million square miles of land -- one fifth of Canada's land base -- it is a land of rock, snow, ice, and sea. The new government of Nunavut will give residents a voice in parliamentary matters and control over their education, health, social and other services.