Iqaluit, Nunavut, is situated at the northeast head of FROBISHER BAY, on southern BAFFIN ISLAND. In an area long used by the INUIT and their ancestors, it is surrounded by hills close to the Sylvia Grinnell River and looks across the bay to the mountains of the Meta Incognita Peninsula. It is the capital and the largest community in Canada's newest territory, NUNAVUT. It is also its only city.

For centuries people in the area lived in small nomadic groups around the bay. The first confirmed contact with outsiders was with the English explorer Martin FROBISHER who made 3 trips to the bay between 1576 and 1578 and believed it might be a strait leading to Asia. In 1861 an American, Charles Francis HALL, explored the region further and discovered that it was indeed a bay. In 1914 the Hudson's Bay Co established the first of several trading stores in the area, but despite the visits by explorers, traders, missionaries and police the Inuit still managed to retain a fairly independent lifestyle in their camps.