Canadian Arctic Cruise Activity

Through the generosity of Jean-Pierre Lehnert, Officer-in-Charge of NORDREG operations in Iqaluit, who took on the task of re-visiting the cruise ship records for these three years, I have been able to develop a much more accurate estimate of passenger numbers in the Canadian Arctic. However, it is still an estimate because there is no requirement for ships to provide the kind of detailed information that is available through IAATO for ships visiting Antarctica. Here numbers for passengers, staff, crew¹ and others, by voyage, are provided. For the Arctic only the Persons on Board (POB) figure is generally available; although occasionally ships do provide passenger and crew numbers. Thus I have estimated the number of Staff², and have generally used the crew numbers for expedition ships given in Of Penguins and Polar Bears: A History of Cold Water Cruising, pp170-174. I will post a re-evaluation of number of cruises and passengers for the Canadian Arctic in the Errata. This will also benefit from access to fairly detailed information about ship activities in Greenland before and after visiting the Canadian Arctic. This information wasn’t available when I prepared the paper on the History of Cruising in the Canadian Arctic, from which the tables on pp 175&176 in Penguins were drawn. I will also update this paper with any revisions.

Places in the Canadian Arctic with Five or More Visits Over 2015-2019

The itinerary logs created by Mr. Lehnert are entirely original, because although the data exists, there has never been a need to extract it from the primary records. In addition to the POB figures, the itineraries offer interesting additional detail. The following spreadsheet shows that 177 unique sites were visited over the five-year period. I have extracted from this list, the places that were visited at least five times during the period. I will post brief descriptions of each of these locations, together with available imagery.

Many communities in the list of places visited have two names; their Inuktitut one, which tends to be more recent, and a historic name given to the location by the Hudson’s Bay Company, or explorers in the 19^th Century. The current name in the list below is the one in most common usage.

Arctic Visits

Ship Abbreviations

Conventions