Island of Ellesmere

The island of Ellesmere is large a island of the Arctic Ocean, more in north of Canadian Arctic Archipel, the third of the Canada and it tenth in the world as for the surface. For this reason, it is sometimes called Ground of Ellesmere . It extends until the Latitude from 83° to the Cape Columbia.

Near to the Greenland, of which it borders the northern coast, it is an island mountainous and beaten by the wind, mainly englacée, the island is almost deprived of plants and animals, except for the pockets of Toundra where appear during the short summer, crawling shrubs and multicoloured flowers (Dryade S, Saxifrage S, Pavot S). By contrast, the sea life is very rich there. One finds in the Fjord S and along the littoral of the populations of boreal Baleine S, Narval S and Polar bear S. a National park was created to preserve this wild life weakened by the climatic conditions.

It shelters the establishment inhabited permanently most septentrional of the world, the station of the Canadian forces Alert. It is of a weather station and radar which makes it possible to recall the jurisdiction of Canada to the great powers which pass without permission under the Canadian ices. In 1968, the forwarding of American Ralph Plaisted left the island of Ward Hunt, very close from there, to reach the North pole in Motoneige. It was the first terrestrial forwarding since the admiral Robert Peary, in 1909, towards this place.

In February 1979, the meteorologists of the station Eureka calculated an average monthly temperature of - 47,9 °C, a record for Canada. In August 2005, an enormous ice floe, from a surface of 66 km ², was violently detached from the island.

History

The first inhabitants of the island of Ellesmere are small groups of Inuits, about 1000 with 2000 av. J. - C. which came to drive out the caribous of Peary, the musk oxen and the marine mammals.

It is explored at the beginning of the 20th century by Norwegian Otto Sverdrup.

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