Rankin Inlet

Rankin Inlet is a mining town. They started out with nickel in the late 1950s, and when the mine petered out in the 1960s, the government started a ceramics workshop. Lately a couple of gold mines have started operating. As it is about halfway between Yellowknife and Iqaluit, and it’s on the edge of Hudson Bay, it’s become a transport hub for all the small communities in the area. The plane from Iqaluit to Churchill stops here, so we decided to stay a couple of days. 

We visited the visitors centre, which has a really nice set of displays. Some dolls with Inuit dress

Some old artefacts.

I particularly liked the cribbage board, since it reminded me of dad’s stories.

It was raining reasonably hard (and had been raining for days), so I took a picture of part of the town from inside the visitors centre.

We then left town. At the edge of town we saw two snow fences. The snow drifts form on the non wind side of the fence, stopping the first row of houses in town from being buried in snow.

We went to the Thule Inuit archeological site, which is amazing. There are many stone tent rings.

It’s beside the river.

The tundra has some quite rocky areas.

And big lakes.

We saw Hudson Bay in front of us on the way home.

We saw a caribou,

A snowy owl 

And a rough legged hawk.

We were very wet and tired by the time we returned to our lodging.