Iqaluit

Inuit and the peoples before them — the Dorset and the Thule — fished here for thousands of years, and the name Iqaluit means "place of many fish". The English navigator Martin Frobisher sailed into the bay in 1576, believing he had found a westward route to China, and the American Charles Francis Hall camped at the Sylvia Grinnell River in 1861. There was no permanent settlement until the Second World War, when in 1942 the United States built Frobisher Bay Air Base as a refuelling stop for aircraft being ferried to Europe. Its first permanent resident was Nakasuk, the Inuk guide who helped choose the site of the airstrip.

The Hudson's Bay Company moved its trading post to Apex in 1949, and in the mid-1950s the building of the Distant Early Warning Line brought hundreds of workers and military staff, followed by Inuit drawn by jobs and medical care. By 1957, 489 of the town's 1,200 people were Inuit. After 1959 the Canadian government added doctors, a school and social services and encouraged Inuit to settle permanently. The American military left in 1963, but Frobisher Bay remained the administrative centre of the eastern Arctic, electing its first council in 1964 and its first mayor in 1979.

On 1 January 1987 the town officially took back its Inuktitut name. The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was signed here in 1993, residents chose Iqaluit as capital in a 1995 vote, and Nunavut came into being on 1 April 1999; Iqaluit became a city in 2001. It co-hosted the Arctic Winter Games with Nuuk in 2002, and in July 2022 Pope Francis became the first pope to visit Nunavut, meeting former residential school students.

Iqaluit is the most Inuit city in Canada: in 2016 about 59 per cent of its people were Inuit, more than in any other Canadian city of over 5,000. About half the city can speak Inuktitut, and the language training centre Pirurvik works to train teachers of the language for Nunavut's communities. Residents are called Iqalummiut.

Inuit art is everywhere. Stone carvings and prints are sold in galleries and directly by artists along the waterfront and in restaurants, and the Legislative Building is decorated with some of the finest Inuit work. St Jude's Cathedral, shaped like an igloo, is both a place of worship and the city's best-known landmark; the altar of its predecessor, made by parishioners under a master carpenter, was shaped like a sled, with a cross of two crossed narwhal tusks.

Two festivals frame the year. Toonik Tyme, the volunteer-run spring festival, mixes traditional Inuit activities with modern events, and the Alianait Arts Festival brings Inuit and international musicians for a week from around 21 June. Recent television has put the city on screen: the beach at Apex stands in for a fictional town in the series North of North.

About 7,400 people lived in Iqaluit at the 2021 census, a fall of 4 per cent since 2016, making it the smallest capital in Canada. The population is young, with a median age of about 30, and about one in ten residents were born abroad, most often in the Philippines. Household incomes are high, but so are housing and food costs, because nearly everything has to be flown in or brought by sealift.

The city's infrastructure is under strain. In October 2021 fuel from a decades-old underground tank was found to have leaked into the tap water, and a state of emergency left residents relying on bottled water and water from nearby rivers. Raw sewage is often discharged untreated into Frobisher Bay, the open-air dump has reached capacity, and there is no recycling programme.

Snowmobiles remain the preferred personal transport, all-terrain vehicles are common, and growing car numbers produce what residents call "the rush minute". Buildings are known by number rather than street address. A deep-sea port opened in 2023, and in March 2026 a privately run bus service began after years without public transport.

Food in Iqaluit starts with country food — animals hunted and fish caught on the land and sea. Caribou and Arctic char are the local specialities, and Inuit also eat seal and whale, often raw or frozen; maktaaq, whale skin with its layer of fat, is prized. Char runs in the Sylvia Grinnell River at the start and end of summer, when it migrates down to the bay and back. Mussels, scallops and shrimp from the surrounding waters also appear on restaurant menus.

Bannock, a simple bread fried in a pan or baked, is eaten across the North. Sharing remains central: meat from a hunt is divided among relatives and elders, and community freezers and hunters' networks matter for nutrition as well as tradition.

Store food is flown in or delivered by the yearly sealift, and prices are far higher than in southern Canada. Restaurants mix northern dishes with southern ones, and local specialities such as char and caribou sit on menus beside familiar southern food.