Cambridge Bay is a hamlet located on Victoria Island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada
Cambridge Bay is the largest settlement on Victoria Island.
Cambridge Bay is named for Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, while the traditional Inuinnaqtun name for the area is Ikaluktutiak, old orthography, or Iqaluktuttiaq, new orthography, meaning “good fishing place”.
The traditional language of the area is Inuinnaqtun and is written using the Latin alphabet rather than the syllabics of the Inuktitut writing system.
Cambridge Bay is the largest stop for passenger and research vessels traversing the Arctic Ocean’s Northwest Passage, a disputed area which the Government of Canada claims are Canadian Internal Waters, while other nations state they are either territorial waters or international waters.
The Estimated Population of Cambridge Bay 1,766.
The area was a traditional hunting and fishing location and archaeological sites are often found. The barren-ground caribou, muskox, Arctic char, lake trout and ringed seal were the primary prey, and remain important food sources.
The first known people to occupy the area were the Pre-Dorset people, somewhere around 1800 BCE, about 4,000 years ago, and were seal and caribou hunters.
The first Europeans to reach Cambridge Bay were overland explorers led by Thomas Simpson in 1839; they were searching for a Northwest Passage and had crossed the sea ice on foot.
In 2012, the roads of Cambridge Bay were imaged for Google Street View by a tricycle fitted with a camera system.
