Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut
The creation of Nunavut will mean that the new government will have a better understanding of life in the north in isolated off-road communities that depend mainly on air travel and satellite communitions.
Chesterfield Inlet has a special history for the meeting of the Inuit with the Western Cultures. The people here worked and lived with the whalers from 1850 to about 1910. The first RCMP station and first Hudson's Bay trading posts were close by.
The first mission, circa 1914, and hospital in the western Hudson Bay Region were built in Chesterfield Inlet as was the first school, Joseph Bernier School opened in 1950. Some of the men and women still living in the Hamlet were born in outlieing camps and moved to Chesterfield Inlet when they were young. It was one of the larger communities until the mines near Rankin Inlet caused many men to move there to work in the mine.
Pictures
1. The Catholic Church and the home for the Priest
2. The Old Mission