Taissumani, March 30

A section of a map made during the Nares expedition of 1875-76 that illustrates the multiplicity of short-lived names that explorers used to represent Ellesmere Island. (HARPER COLLECTION)

For most Canadians, our country doesn’t go that far north. It’s not on the TV weather map.

And so they don’t know of the existence of Ellesmere Island, home to Canada’s most northerly civilian settlement on its south coast and its most northerly military base on the north-eastern tip. Of course, Nunavummiut know it well, even if most have never been there, for it is home to Canada’s most northerly Inuit.

The ancestors of today’s Greenlanders were the first humans to see this immense island as they passed slowly through the far northern islands on a series of migrations to new land. These Paleo-Eskimos (generally called Pre-Dorset in Canada) passed this way about 4,000 years ago.

William Baffin was the first non-Inuk to see the island, in 1616. But he thought that Baffin Island and the islands to the north of it were all one land mass joined farther north to Greenland. And so he did not give a name to the spectacular coastline that he sighted.

Two centuries and two years later, John Ross also thought that Ellesmere Island (still unnamed) and Greenland were one.

It was not until Inglefield entered Smith Sound in 1852 that an explorer realized that the two land masses were not joined. And so he named the western coast Ellesmere Island after the Earl of Ellesmere, vice president of the Royal Geographical Society. He also named the south-eastern part of the island North Lincoln, after Lincoln County in England.

The following year, Elisha Kent Kane and his party, on the Second Grinnell Expedition, passed through Smith Sound to Kane Basin. One of the party, Isaac Hayes, visited the Ellesmere coast, where he found a large bay, which he modestly named after himself — Hayes Sound. Today we call it Buchanan Bay.

Hayes thought that it separated the land to its south — the “Ellesmere Island” that Inglefield had named — from the land to the north. The land to the north must be new, reasoned Hayes, and so he named it Grinnell Land after the expedition’s patron.

Then on the Polaris Expedition of 1871, Charles Francis Hall reached even higher northern latitudes. From his base at Thank God Harbour on the coast of Greenland, Hall sledged north to the mouth of Newman Bay, almost on the latitude of Alert.

Of course he was within sight of the Ellesmere coast to the west, then still known as Grinnell Land, but did not visit it and so made no territorial claim to it. He thought that the deep indentation on that coastline, Lady Franklin Bay, was a strait, and therefore that the land to the north of it must be yet another new land. He named it Grant Land, after U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant.

A few years later George Nares, on a British expedition, mapped Lady Franklin Bay, proving it to be a bay, and thus showing that Grinnell Land and Grant Land were joined.

In the early 1880s, on Greely’s tragic expedition, Lieutenant Lockwood reached a large fiord on the western coast of the island and named it Greely Fjord after his commander. Lockwood named the unexplored region south of that fiord Arthur Land after the 21st president of the United States, Chester Alan Arthur. The name, like the president, was quickly forgotten.

With Arthur Land and North Lincoln forgotten and Grant Land relegated to the error bin of history, that left two names remaining for the island that we know today as Ellesmere – Grinnell Land for the northern portion and Ellesmere Island for the southern part. Buchanan Bay (Hayes Sound) was still thought to separate them.
The Norwegian Otto Sverdrup, who explored the area extensively for four years beginning in 1899, was the first to realize that the two lands were indeed one. Perversely he ignored both names and named the island King Oscar Land after the king of Norway and Sweden — Norway had not yet gained its independence.

Today, the multiplicity of names that once graced this bold and mysterious island have all been abandoned in favour of the name that Inglefield first gave it, Ellesmere Island.

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.