Lost Into The Mists Of Time

 This topographical map of the Arctic includes the Arctic circle, as well as lines denoting the tree line, permafrost, and average distribution of sea ice.

Indigenous peoples of the Arctic are beyond those in North America- northern Europe and Russia have distinctive indigenous peoples.

This display case includes items of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, a scientific venture that spent some years in the first quarter of the 20th century exploring the Arctic.

While this display case includes remnants of an earlier expedition. Captain John Franklin took two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, in search of the Northwest Passage in the 1840s and disappeared into the mists of time. A handful of graves were found along with artifacts like this, but most of the expedition disappeared. The ships themselves were only found in recent years in shallow Arctic waters.

A section of the Arctic Gallery is given over to a rotating series on people and places in the North. At present, that is on Qikiqtait. Also known as the Belcher Islands, this is an archipelago in the vastness of Hudson Bay. Inuit people live off the land in this place, and the display area looks at their way of life and culture. As I was passing through this area, a woman was with her daughter, pointing at a specific house in a large photo of a village, and saying that was where she had grown up. 

The common eider is an essential part of life for these people- the down from their feathers is very, very warm.