Canada Cruises

Separates south-eastern Victoria Island from the mainland in Nunavut, Canada.

At its western end lies Cambridge Bay, leading to Dease Strait; to the east lies Simpson Strait; and to the north, Victoria Strait. It is home to the Queen Maud Gulf Migratory Bird Sanctuary with a range of shorebirds and wildfowl that can be encountered, and other Arctic animals.

Situated close to the southwest corner of Devon Island with Viscount Melville Sound nearby.

Great ship cruising in a location close to where Lancaster Sound splits into a myriad of channels that made the exploration of the northwest passage so challenging.

The location on King William Island, where some of the men of the Franklin expedition created a summer camp in the summer of 1847 for magnetic observations.

By late December 1847/January 1848, the officers and men left the camp in a hurry and headed back to the ships. The site as ‘discovered’ in 1859 by the McClintock expedition searching for evidence of Franklin’s Expedition, finding artifacts.

This long sound separates Somerset Island on the east from Prince of Wales Island on the west. To the north it opens onto Parry Channel. To the south, at the mouth the Bellot Strait, it merges with Franklin Strait.

Sir John Franklin passed through the strait in 1846, an unseasonably warm summer, since typically Peel Sound is frozen. The east side of Peel Sound was traced by James Clark Ross in 1849, searching for Franklin, and in 1858 Francis Leopold McClintock tried to penetrate it and was blocked by ice. Even today cruise ships attempting the NW passage prefer the Bellot Strait route compared to Peel Sound.

Located at the mouth of the Coppermine River in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada, on the southwest side of Coronation Gulf, southwest of Victoria Island.

It is the westernmost community in Nunavut, near the border with the Northwest Territories. There is an airport and Kugulutuk is a location where small expedition ships may drop and pick up passengers before or after a trip through the northwest Passage (rather than a longer trip right through the Bering Strait).

Good place to see a range of 'high' Arctic birds typical of this remote part of Canada.

On Ellesmere Island (10th largest in the World) and the most northerly community in Canada. In Inuktitut it is called Aujuittuq—”the place that never thaws”.

It is the only ‘public’ community on Ellesmere Island, created in 1953 by the Canadian Government with a relocation of Inuit families from Inukjuak, Quebec. It is also one of the coldest inhabited places in the world, with an average yearly temperature of −16.5 °C (2.3 °F). There is an airport, but even today it can be a challenging place to land, or even get ashore by Zodiac from a ship.

Key historical site where Franklin spent his first winter before the Erebus and Terror vanished to the outside World.

Made very sombre with the graves of three of Franklin’s men, and others, plus later memorials. Situated on the very southwest corner of Devon Island, separated by Barrow Strait, it is at a key ‘crossroad’ in the northwest Passage and was the main base in the search for Franklin.

This remote location is a key destination for everyone that visits the NW passage, with the main focus on the location, rather than wildlife, but offshore can be good for Beluga.

The island (the 61st-largest island in the world and Canada's 15th-largest island) and the surrounding area was the region where the Erebus and Terror ended up.

It is now known the two ships became stranded in 1846 when frozen in the sea ice northwest of the island. After abandoning the two ships, most of the crew died from exposure and starvation as they attempted to walk south near the western coastline. Two of Franklin's men were buried at Hall Point on the island's south coast. It wasn't until June 29, 1981, that researchers finally had luck. A team led by Canadian archaeologist Owen Beattie, found 31 pieces of human bone fragments on the southern tip of the island, called Booth Point. On September 9, 2014 the Victoria Strait Expedition located the wreck of HMS Erebus. The HMS Terror, was found in 2016 in Terror Bay, off the south-west coast of King William Island.

The area also played an important for the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen on the expedition through the Northwest Passage, spending nearly two years with his ship on the SE coast at what is now known as Gjoa Haven. The island is separated from the Boothia Peninsula by the James Ross Strait to the northeast, and the Rae Strait to the east. To the west is the Victoria Strait and beyond it Victoria Island. Within the Simpson Strait, to the south of the island, then the Adelaide Peninsula, part of mainland Canada. Queen Maud Gulf lies to the southwest.

The Location of the HMS Terror, (discovered in 2016) off the south-west coast of King William Island.

Curiously the name is coincidental, but it is a sheltered location suggesting the ship was sailed into the location, rather than drifting here. It is located in the south-western side of King William Island, the entrance to the bay marked by Fitzjames Island to the west and Queen Maud Gulf to the west, and Irving Islands to the east. Queen Maud Gulf is between the northern coast of the mainland and the south-eastern corner of Victoria Island.