Bylot Island, Arctic Circle

Bylot Island lies off the northern tip of Baffin Island within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.  It is part of Sirmilik National Park, one of Canada’s remotest protected areas.

Its name, meaning “the place of glaciers” in Inuktitut, reflects its towering mountains, deep fjords, ice coastlines, and sprawling glaciers.

The island is also home to the Bylot Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary, a key nesting spot for migratory birds.  Thousands of thick-billed murres, known for their excellent diving skills, crowd on the island’s steep cliffs, creating noisy, bustling colonies.  Elsewhere, black-legged kittiwakes make sharp calls that e4cho through the air, while the striking white plumage of the greater snow geese is easy to spot as they graze across the tundra.

The sharp peaks of the Bylot Martin Mountains on the island are divided by deep, glacier-filled valleys.  While the rugged terrain makes permanent habitation impossible, it has long drawn explorers and adventurers, particularly mountaineers.  Since the first successful traverse of the island in 1939, climbers have returned to scale its remote summits, with one expedition in 1984 claiming an impressive 28 peaks.

But exploration of this wild landscape stretches back even further, more than four centuries earlier, in fact, when English seaman Robert Bylot and navigator William Baffin charted the surrounding Arctic waters during their 1616 voyage.  In their search for the Northwest Passage, they mapped what would become known as Bylot Island and Baffin Island, making one of the most accurate early surveys of the Canadian Arctic.  Though their finding were met with skepticism and largely dismissed for nearly 200 years, the area was “rediscovered” in 1818.  Their original records were proven accurate, and the value of their work was finally acknowledged.  However, credit was given almost entirely to Baffin, while Bylot remained largely overlooked, possibly because of his working-class background and lack of formal education or his earlier involvement in the mutiny during Hudson’s expedition.  Whatever the reason, Bylot’s name lives on in the island he helped chart.