Fort Ross

The Hudson Bay Company developed a lot of depots over the north of Canada. They were all called Forts, and Fort Ross was the last one, in 1937. It’s on Somerset Island, and that part of the island is often prone to pack ice, so the depot wasn’t in a good location, so it only ran for 10 years.

We visited it this morning. Two buildings, a cairn and a later memorial plaque survive.

Inuits made their home near the depot, an I saw five tent rings (round groupings of stones to hold down their tents) there today.

There were even flowering plants there, including the willow in the second picture which would be several decades old.

The area was quite beautiful.

In the afternoon we had our first disappointment. We were supposed to go to a very large Inuit archeological site. It was going to be a wet journey as the sea was a bit choppy. Unfortunately, there was a polar bear there, so we couldn’t see the archeology. But we could go and see the bear safely from zodiacs. I think I was the only one disappointed by this. But the weather got worse, so the whole thing was cancelled after half of us had boarded the zodiacs. We had a lecture on polar bears instead.