Ulukhaktok

Ulukhaktok

The Inuvialuit community of around 500 people, formerly known as Holman, is located on the west coast of Victoria Island, the ninth largest island on Earth. While people came here for the mining of slate and copper, it was not a permanent settlement until the 1930s, when the Hudson's Bay Company opened a store and a Roman Catholic mission. From that time on, Ulukhaktok became famous for two things: the world's northernmost golf course and beautiful Inuit prints. As in other small traditional communities in the area, hunting, trapping and fishing are the main sources of income, but in recent years printmaking has taken over as the main source of income. Nineteenth-century whalers rarely made it to east to Amundsen Bay, so explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was the first qallunaaq, or white man, who visited the Copper Inuit on the west side of Victoria Island in 1911. The permanent community grew up around a trading post created in 1940 to capitalize on the then-booming Arctic Fox fur trade. With the help of local guides, nature expeditions, high-quality bass and lake trout fishing and sport hunting are also organized.