Facts About Cambridge Bay
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Cambridge Bay is a hamlet located on Victoria Island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada
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Cambridge Bay is the largest settlement on Victoria Island.
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Cambridge Bay is named for Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, while the traditional Inuinnaqtun name for the area is Ikaluktutiak, old orthography, or Iqaluktuttiaq, new orthography, meaning “good fishing place”.
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The traditional language of the area is Inuinnaqtun and is written using the Latin alphabet rather than the syllabics of the Inuktitut writing system.
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Cambridge Bay is the largest stop for passenger and research vessels traversing the Arctic Ocean’s Northwest Passage, a disputed area which the Government of Canada claims are Canadian Internal Waters, while other nations state they are either territorial waters or international waters.
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The Estimated Population of Cambridge Bay 1,766.
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The area was a traditional hunting and fishing location and archaeological sites are often found. The barren-ground caribou, muskox, Arctic char, lake trout and ringed seal were the primary prey, and remain important food sources.
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The first known people to occupy the area were the Pre-Dorset people, somewhere around 1800 BCE, about 4,000 years ago, and were seal and caribou hunters.
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The first Europeans to reach Cambridge Bay were overland explorers led by Thomas Simpson in 1839; they were searching for a Northwest Passage and had crossed the sea ice on foot.
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In 2012, the roads of Cambridge Bay were imaged for Google Street View by a tricycle fitted with a camera system.