Bathurst Inlet Research Articles

Nadlok and Its Unusual Antler Dwellings

Nadlok, or crossing-place-of-deer in Bathurst Inuit dialect, is an island camp and herd interception site found in 1982 by Douglas Stern 100 km south of Bathurst Inlet, Northwest Territories. In the Little Ice Age (1450-1700 A.D.), a few families of coastal Copper Inuit appear to have abandoned a declining seal resource on the coast for predictable and available inland caribou hunting at Nadlok. A simple tent camp, as seen in the architecturally sterile bottom level dating 1400 A.D., evolved into 15 sturdy stone and antler dwellings occupied in winter. ... Scattered between the floors were late prehistoric Copper Inuit tools, art and trade goods. Men's and women's tools include an ornately engraved antler knife handle, ulus, harpoons, arrows, copper fishhooks with bone lures, needle cases, whittling knives, engraved pendants, fire-starting kits and awls. There were some 40 000 bones, mostly the remains of caribou, but also of birds, fish and muskox. ...

Bryophytes of the Cape Parry and Bathurst Inlet Region, Northwest Territories

Bryophytes of the Cape Parry and Bathurst Inlet Region, Northwest Territories

Spore Ornamentation in the Lichen Genus Solorina

SEM study of 5 arctic alpine species of Solorina shows that each species has a dis- tinctive spore coat pattern. S. spongiosa, often thought to be an ecological variant of S. saccata, differs from that species in its spore pattern. The arctic alpine genus Solorina has five species in North America mainly well separated by num- bers of spores in the ascus, 2, 4, or 8 (Thomson 1979). The spores are thick-walled and in light mi- croscopy appear roughened. This suggested the pos- sibility that scanning electron microscopy (SEM) might bring out useful information by use of its superior resolution, depth of field, and high mag- nification. The use of SEM in lichenology was pioneered by Hawksworth (1969) with a study of cortical hyphal orientation in Alectoria and Cornicularia. Hale (1973) reported cortical characters in the Parmeli- aceae and later (1981) added studies of pseudocy- phellae and pored epicortices. Peveling (1970) con- tributed SEM and transmission electron microscope studies of surface features of a variety of lichens, and Beltman (1978) discussed the taxonomic sig- nificance of vegetative structures based on SEM preparations. Tibell (1971, 1978, 1981a,b) has con- sistently used SEM in studies of the Caliciaceae and recently (1981 b) included a study of spore orna- mentation in two species of Sphaerophorus. In the presentation of the distribution maps of Solorina in Great Britain Gilbert (1975) published SEM pho- tos of three species but did not show the details of ornamentation with sufficient clarity. The current study is a preliminary survey of the spore wall ap- pearance of the five arctic species of Solorina. Materials. The following specimens in wis were used for the photographs in this study: S. bispora, Canada, N.W.T., Axel Heiberg Island, Scotter 46106; S. crocea, Alaska, Mile 86, Haines Highway, Thomson & Ahti 21214; S. octospora, Alaska, Seward Peninsula, Cape Prince of Wales, Flock 630; S. saccata, Canada, N.W.T., Bathurst Inlet, Scotter 33566; S. spongiosa, Montana, Flathead County, along Route 2, between Essex and Summit, Ro- sentreter 2071.

Additions to the vascular plant flora of the Bathurst Inlet Region, Northwest Territories

Additions to the vascular plant flora of the Bathurst Inlet Region, Northwest Territories

Lichens from Bathurst Inlet Region, Northwest Territories, Canada

Reported from Bathurst Inlet region in the central northern conti- nental arctic of North America are 214 species representing 223 taxa. The majority are circumpolar species, seven are western arctic, three are possibly eastern arctic. Pertusaria excludens is reported from the American arctic and Peltigera occiden- talis is confirmed for North America. New combinations are Aspicila arctica (Lynge) Thoms. and Aspicilia bennettii (Lynge) Thoms. Bathurst Inlet, located in the central northern edge of the continental arctic portion of North America, is important in providing information on the extent of distribution of the American arctic lichens, such as whether or not the ranges extend that far from the eastern arctic or represent easterly ranges of the Beringian, western arctic, elements in the flora. The comparative inaccessibility of this area has left its cryptogamic flora unstudied until now. The nearest lichen studies are those to the west at the Anderson River drainage (Ahti et al. 1973), to the south in the vicinity of Great Slave Lake (Thomson et al. 1969) and to the southeast in the Thelon River region (Scotter & Thomson 1966). Bathurst Inlet is on the mainland of the western Canadian Arctic, roughly between the mouth of the Mackenzie River and Boothia Peninsula. The inlet is a complex submerged valley that penetrates from the east end of Coronation Gulf in a southeasterly direction about 200 km into the barren grounds. The Bathurst Inlet area lies wholly within the physiographic division of the Canadian Shield. Bird and Bird (1961) described the physiographic regions defined below. The Inlet itself and its adjacent lowlands they regard as a long narrow southward extension of the Coronation Gulf lowlands penetrating the Canadian Shield, which forms plateaus to east and west: the Tree River Uplands, Wilberforce Hills and Contwoyto Plateau to the west, and the Bathurst and Buchan Uplands to the east. The Contwoyto Plateau is in general high (450 m elev.), gently rolling, and mantled with drift, with the Wilberforce Hills as its rough dissected edge. The Tree River Upland is a lower, dissected granite plateau of smoothed rock-knob hills penetrated by deep valleys into which drift deposits have been washed. The Buchan Upland northeast of Bathurst Inlet is similar to the Tree River Upland although somewhat lower, a granite peneplain eroded into bare rock-knob hills. Drift washed into the valleys supports damp tundra, although many valleys are blocked, forming elongated or cruciform lakes. The Bathurst Upland to the southeast corresponds to the Contwoyto Plateau; near Gordon Bay this upland surface is deeply dissected. Farther south, to the east of Western River, there is less dissection, but both areas are rocky. The

Large-scale stratiform and intrusive sedimentary breccias of the lower Proterozoic Goulburn Group, Bathurst Inlet, N.W.T.

Two types of sedimentary breccia have been identified in the lower Proterozoic (1.7 to 2.5 Ga) Goulburn Group, Bathurst Inlet, N.W.T. One type is a single unit of strata-bound breccia consisting predominantly of sedimentary clasts surrounding large (up to 500 m in length) sheets of chaotically folded and brecciated allochthonous carbonates. This breccia, the Omingmaktook member of the Brown Sound Fm., is an olistostrome interpreted to have formed by slumping of carbonate sediments during differential basin subsidence and (or) evaporite solution. The other type of breccia occurs as intrusive dykes and large cylindrical bodies (up to 1 km in diameter) that cut through more than 2000 m of Goulburn strata. The intrusive breccias also cross-cut and rework the olistostrome. These intrusive breccias: are of entirely sedimentary composition, and restricted to the upper Goulburn Group; are generally unsorted and exhibit both massive and flowage-layered textures; and contain quartz, dolomite, and minor tourmaline crystals. The intrusive breccias are interpreted as exhumed conduits through which trapped intrastratal fluids migrated to a post-Goulburn paleosurface. Intrusion of the breccia is interpreted to have been produced by the accumulation of pools of intrastratal fluids in structural traps, which under pressure intruded and stoped into overlying strata, eventually reaching a Goulburn paleosurface where they extruded mud flows and formed sedimentary volcanoes.

Aulacogenes: Intracratonic Proterozoic Basins That Control Phanerozoic Sedimentation: ABSTRACT

Aulacogenes are long-lived trenchlike basins first described on the Russian and Siberian platforms. Subsidence in known aulacogenes was mainly Proterozoic, but many persisted as moderate negative structures in the Phanerozoic and others rebounded vertically to become linear ridges. Thus, important facies changes in Phanerozoic sediments may be located by projecting the trends of exposed aulacogenes into the subsurface. Two lower Proterozoic aulacogenes have been recognized in the northwestern Canadian shield--one with a WSW trend that dips beneath Phanerozoic cover at Great Slave Lake and a second with a NNW trend that dips beneath the cover of Victoria Island from Bathurst Inlet. Aulacogenes are much longer lived than other intracratonic basins. They are fault bounded, linear, and narrow, commonly 200 mi long but only 25 mi wide. They trend at high angles to the craton margin, where they merge with a contemporaneous orthogeosyncline that borders the craton. Their rock sections thicken outward from the center of the craton to as much as 40,000 ft near the margin. They contain mostly miogeosynclinal and exogeosynclinal facies, but with the addition of basic volcanics and fanglomerate at several levels. Alluvial sediment transport in aulacogenes is mainly parallel with their trends, not transverse as in the geosyncline. The sedimentary beds have mild compressive folds paralleling the boundary faults, but low-angle overthrusts, typical of the geosyncline, are abse t. Aulacogenes, unlike geosynclines, are not accounted for by global plate tectonics. The dipping of laterally adjacent sediments toward aulacogenes, the compressive deformation within aulacogenes, and the abrupt descent of the Mohorovicic discontinuity beneath aulacogenes indicate foundering of a narrow slice of continental crust into the mantle (as opposed to tensional block faulting) to produce aulacogenes. If this interpretation is correct, aulacogenes should be bounded by high-angle reverse faults, rather than by normal faults. Aulacogenes, characteristic of the Proterozoic, may represent a stage in the evolution of the continental portions of global plates intermediate between the pervasive mobility of the Archean and the persistent true cratons of the Phanerozoic in which only relict aulacogenes are found. End_of_Article - Last_Page 627------------

Present and postglacial rates of uplift for glaciated northern and eastern North America derived from postglacial uplift curves

Average rates of postglacial uplift reach a maximum value of nearly 4 m 100 y−1 over southeastern Hudson Bay, and another high cell, with rates of about 2.5 m 100 y−1, lies between Bathurst Inlet and Southampton Island. Current rates of uplift are underestimated if exponential curves are fitted solely to dated raised marine deposits without considering the amount of future recovery. Rates of rebound are, instead, derived from A/t where A is uplift in the first 1000 y since deglaciation, and t is time since deglaciation. For the northwest margin of the former ice sheet coefficients of determination for rate of uplift, at specific times, as a function of distance are [Formula: see text]. Maps of rates of uplift for northern and eastern North America are presented for 8000 y B.P., 6000 y B.P. and the present day. They reveal the existence of three uplift centers and show that rates of uplift declined from a maximum of 10 to 12 m 100 y−1, immediately following deglaciation, to a current maximum of about 1.3 m 100 y−1. Agreement is satisfactory when calculated rates of uplift are compared with those derived from geological observations, radiocarbon dates, and from water-level records. A final map shows isochrones on the uplift rate of ~1 m 100 y−1. The rate dropped to this value about 10 000 y ago on the outer northwest and southeast coasts, whereas the value might not be reached for another 2000 y in southeastern Hudson Bay.

Decapod Crustacea of the Beaufort Sea and Arctic Waters Eastward to Cambridge Bay, 1960–65

The CGS Salvelinus collections of decapod crustaceans from south Beaufort Sea to Cambridge Bay in 1960–65 comprised 1830 specimens of 15 species. Five of the species were not previously recorded from this area. Most abundant species were Sabinea septemcarinata and Eualus gaimardi. Eualus macilentus and E. stoneyi were confined to Bathurst Inlet. Westward setting currents along the Beaufort Sea coast mediate against incursions by Pacific species but Chionoecetes opilio, Hyas coarctatus alutaceus, and a species of Pagurus seemed to have overcome this condition. The species in which the highest percentages of females presumably reproduced annually were Spirontocaris phippsi, S. spinus, and S. septemcarinata.

Additional Bird Observations at Bathurst Inlet, N.W.T.

Additional Bird Observations at Bathurst Inlet, N.W.T.

J.J. O'Neill (1886-1966)

A Who's Who-type biographical sketch of J. J. O'Neill might read as follows: O'Neill, John Johnston, born Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada, 12 November 1886, died Ottawa, Ontario, 1 June 1966; son of Thomas John and Mary Jane (Henderson) O'Neill. B.Sc. McGill University 1909; Ph.D. Yale University 1912. Married Lillian Mary Campbell, 9 December 1918. Children: Gordon Campbell, killed in action in World War II, and Melville Henderson. Geologist, Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-16; geological staff, Geological Survey of Canada, 1914-20; assistant professor of geology, McGill University, 1921-27; associate professor 1927-29; Sir William Dawson Professor of Geology and Head, Department of Geology, 1929-52; Dean of Science, 1935-39; Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, 1938-42; Dean of Engineering, 1942-52; Vice-Principal, McGill University, 1948-52; President, Royal Society of Canada, 1950-51; a Founder, Governor, and Board Chairman Arctic Institute of North America; Fellow, Arctic Institute of North America, Geological Society of America, Royal Society of Canada; Sigma Xi; Freemason; Conservative; Anglican. Club: Faculty (McGill). However detailed, such a sketch would give only an incomplete glimpse of a highly accomplished man who could be stern and awesome, yet kindly and informal, adventurous yet conservative, critical yet forgiving - in short, a whole man. It may be difficult for some who knew O'Neill as an administrator rather than as a young field geologist to visualize him as an adventurous person in addition to one who took a judicious and studious approach to problems. Yet in 1913 when he joined the Canadian Arctic Expedition in his late twenties he took a leading part in almost as venturesome an enterprise as a trip to the Moon would be today. The measure of the man is illustrated by the fact that although he and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, leader of the expedition, found themselves in opposing camps following strong expedition disagreements, O'Neill voluntarily, and at the expense of possibly handicapping his own work, gave his personal chronometer to Stefansson - an act that saved the latter's exploration program. O'Neill was the first geologist to study the mainland coast of Arctic Canada from Darnley Bay to Bathurst Inlet, a coastline distance of some 600 miles. The resulting publications indicated the bright future that lay ahead of him - Vice-Principal of McGill University, President of the Royal Society of Canada, and many additional honors about which others will write more appropriately than I. When I first met Dean O'Neill in 1938 to seek his aid in connection with further geologic research in the region he had studied, his friendliness and helpful advice made a great impression on me. Later, after World War II, as a Founder and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Arctic Institute of North America, he continued to provide excellent counsel and generous assistance during the early critical days of the Institute, when his wisdom helped to assure the organization's future. When O'Neill and Stefansson became fellow Board members, the differences that had developed during the Canadian Arctic Expedition still lingered, and it is a credit to both that when they met at an Institute Board meeting in Montreal, they shook hands for the first time in some thirty years and worked harmoniously together for the Institute. It takes great men to do this and O'Neill was such. John Johnston O'Neill was in a unique position to contribute to the Arctic Institute of North America and he did so most effectively. He contributed significantly to science, to international cooperation in science, and in the broader context to mutual understanding and respect between nations.

Activities of the Geographical Branch in Northern Canada, 1947-1957

The Geographical Branch of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys was created in 1947. Under its terms of references, part of its responsibility is the collection and analysis of geographical information on northern Canada, in particular the territories under the jurisdiction of the federal government. In the decade since the Branch's inauguration, geographers have carried out various kinds of field surveys in the Canadian Arctic and subarctic, from the northern coast of Ellesmere Island to the Hudson Bay coastal plain in Ontario, and from the Alaska boundary to Labrador. These surveys have varied from parties formed entirely of geographers to individual shipboard observers or representatives on collaborative teams of scientists. The collection of basic information on the vast unknown expanses of the Arctic is peculiarly suited to the application of geographic methods. Utilizing the trimetrogon and vertical photography carried out since World War II, geographers have applied sampling techniques in interpreting larger areas, making intensive field studies of representative terrain types and expanding them by use of the air photos in delimiting, describing and analysing physiographic regions. Studies in physical geography have been the backbone of the work of the Branch in the Arctic. Air photo interpretation keys have been prepared for 14 areas: Alert, Eureka, Mould Bay, Resolute, Mackenzie Delta, Darnley Bay, Coppermine, Bathurst Inlet, Boothia Isthmus, Wager Bay, Southampton Island, Kaniapiskau-Koksoak Rivers in Ungava, the Hudson Bay Railway, and the Kenogami River. Reports on the human geography of various areas were included in the field reports and are mainly unpublished; several studies in historical geography also resulted from the field surveys. ...

Birds Observed At Bathurst Inlet, Northwest Territories

Birds Observed At Bathurst Inlet, Northwest Territories

New plant records from Bathurst Inlet, N.W.T.

New plant records from Bathurst Inlet, N.W.T.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police: Three Patrols Made in the Canadian Arctic in 1934

This patrol—which was made through comparatively untravelled country, and which was the first police patrol undertaken between the Red Rock Lake district, due east of Great Bear Lake, North-west Territories and Bathurst Inlet—would have been a difficult one under ordinary conditions of spring travel. It was, however, carried out in mid-winter, when travelling conditions were exceptionally severe; and the party covered 700 miles during 37 days.

The Bathurst Inlet Patrol

The Bathurst Inlet Patrol

Canadian Exploration

SOME information on the work of the Canadian Arctic Expedition additional to that alreadv published appears in the Geographical Review for October (vol. iv., No. 4). The whole of the coast-line from Cape Bathurst to the eastern end of Coronation Gulf, except Cape Parry peninsula, was surveyed on a scale of ten miles to an inch. The surveys were extended to include Croker River and Rae River. Other surveys included much of the Mackenzie delta. The most important geological research of the southern party, with whose work this paper bv Mr. R. M. Anderson deals, was the investigation of the copper-bearing rocks in the region of Bathurst Inlet. They occur on Banks Peninsula and most of the islands to the north of it. Though the ore so far discovered is of low grade, Dr. O'Neill, the geologist of the expedition, estimated the amount of ore at more than two billion tons, and believes that it can be profitably utilised. Water transport round Alaska would be long and uncertain, but a short railway to Great Bear Lake would probably solve the difficulty of export. The article is illustrated with two sketch maps and a number of valuable photographs.