City of Iqaluit

About City of Iqaluit

Iqaluit is the capital of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, its largest community, and its only city. It was known as Frobisher Bay from 1942 to 1987, after the large bay on the coast on which the city is situated. In 1987, its traditional Inuktitut name was restored. In 1999, Iqaluit was designated the capital of Nunavut after the division of the Northwest Territories into two separate territories. Before this event, Iqaluit was a small city and not well known outside the Canadian Arctic or Canada, with population and economic growth highly limited. This is due to the city's isolation and heavy dependence on expensive imported supplies, as the city, like the rest of Nunavut, has no road or rail, and only has ship connections for part of the year to the rest of Canada. The city has a polar climate, influenced by the cold deep waters of the Labrador Current just off Baffin Island—this makes the city of Iqaluit cold, although it is well south of the Arctic Circle.