Pond Inlet

Pond Inlet, or Mittimatalik in Inuktitut (meaning 'the landing place'), is a small hamlet located on northern Baffin Island. The area has been inhabited by Inuit for roughly 1,000 years and was first visited by Europeans in 1818, when it was named by explorer John Ross for John Pond, an English astronomer. In the early 1800s, British whaling vessels began to penetrate Ponds Bay in search of the bowhead whale. The whaling trade continued to exist as the region's primary industry until the early 20th century when whale stocks collapsed. Trade between the Inuit and the whalers and explorers in firearms, wood, tobacco and metal tools altered the Inuit way of life quite dramatically as dwellings and hunting techniques were changed by the technology.

By the early 1900s the Northwest Mounted Police had begun to visit the area on their patrols from Clyde further south. Missionaries also began to arrive in the Inuit communities at roughly the same time. With the decline of the whaling industry, ivory and furs soon became the area's main export and the former whalers and the Hudson's Bay Company moved in to trade with the local residents.

By the middle of the 20th century the Canadian government established a school at Pond in an attempt to increase its presence in the region. Inuit began to settle in the area and both radio and telephone service soon followed.