Geography
The archipelago extends some 2,400 km (1,500 mi) longitudinally and 1,900 km (1,200 mi) from the mainland to Cape Columbia, the northernmost point on Ellesmere Island. It is bounded on the west by the Beaufort Sea; on the northwest by the Arctic Ocean; on the east by Greenland, Baffin Bay and Davis Strait; and on the south by Hudson Bay and the Canadian mainland. The various islands are separated from each other and the continental mainland by a series of waterways collectively known as the Northwestern Passages. Two large peninsulas, Boothia and Melville, extend northward from the mainland.
The archipelago consists of 36,563 islands, of which 94 are classified as major islands, being larger than 130 km2 (50 sq mi), and cover a total area of 1,400,000 km2 (540,000 sq mi). The islands of the archipelago over 10,000 km2 (3,900 sq mi), in order of descending area, are:
| Name | Location* | Area | Area rank | Population (2001) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| World | Canada | ||||
| Baffin Island | NU | 507,451 km2 (195,928 sq mi) | 5 | 1 | 9,563 |
| Victoria Island | NT, NU | 217,291 km2 (83,897 sq mi) | 9 | 2 | 1,707 |
| Ellesmere Island | NU | 196,236 km2 (75,767 sq mi) | 10 | 3 | 168 |
| Banks Island | NT | 70,028 km2 (27,038 sq mi) | 24 | 5 | 114 |
| Devon Island | NU | 55,247 km2 (21,331 sq mi) | 27 | 6 | 0 |
| Axel Heiberg Island | NU | 43,178 km2 (16,671 sq mi) | 32 | 7 | 0 |
| Melville Island | NT, NU | 42,149 km2 (16,274 sq mi) | 33 | 8 | 0 |
| Southampton Island | NU | 41,214 km2 (15,913 sq mi) | 34 | 9 | 721 |
| Prince of Wales Island | NU | 33,339 km2 (12,872 sq mi) | 40 | 10 | 0 |
| Somerset Island | NU | 24,786 km2 (9,570 sq mi) | 46 | 12 | 0 |
| Bathurst Island | NU | 16,042 km2 (6,194 sq mi) | 54 | 13 | 0 |
| Prince Patrick Island | NT | 15,848 km2 (6,119 sq mi) | 55 | 14 | 0 |
| King William Island | NU | 13,111 km2 (5,062 sq mi) | 61 | 15 | 960 |
| Ellef Ringnes Island | NU | 11,295 km2 (4,361 sq mi) | 69 | 16 | 0 |
| Bylot Island | NU | 11,067 km2 (4,273 sq mi) | 72 | 17 | 0 |
*
After Greenland, the archipelago is the world’s largest high-Arctic land area. The climate of the islands is arctic, and the terrain consists of tundra except in mountainous areas. Most of the islands are uninhabited; human settlement is extremely thin and scattered, being mainly coastal Inuit settlements on the southern islands.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Arctic Archipelago
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)