Boothia Peninsula is a large
peninsulaA peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....
in
NunavutNunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993...
's
northern CanadianNorthern Canada, colloquially the North, is the vast northernmost region of Canada variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to the three territories of Canada: Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut...
ArcticThe Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
, south of Somerset Island. The northern part,
Murchison PromontoryMurchison Promontory is a peninsula in northern Canada that is the northernmost point on mainland Canada and on the mainland of North America; it is also one of the Extreme points of Earth....
, is the northernmost point of mainland Canada, and thus
North AmericaNorth America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
.
Bellot StraitBellot Strait is a passage of water in Nunavut separating Somerset Island from Murchison Promontory on the Boothia Peninsula, the northernmost part of mainland North America...
(Ikirahaq) separates the peninsula from Somerset Island to the north. Babbage Bay is on the east coast, as is Abernethy Bay, just to the south. Taloyoak is in the far south. Paisley Bay is on the west coast, as is Wrottesley Inlet (between Paisley Bay and Bellot Strait).
The peninsula was named by the Scottish explorer
John RossSir John Ross, CB, was a Scottish rear admiral and Arctic explorer.Ross was the son of the Rev. Andrew Ross, minister of Inch, near Stranraer in Scotland. In 1786, aged only nine, he joined the Royal Navy as an apprentice. He served in the Mediterranean until 1789 and then in the English Channel...
in 1829 after
Felix BoothSir Felix Booth, 1st Baronet was a wealthy UK gin distiller. His earlier family had founded Booth's Gin in London in 1740. In 1832 Booth bought the site of the old Ophthalmic Hospital in Albany Street, Regent's Park as a site for his distillery...
, the patron of Ross's second expedition. Ross encountered a large
InuitThe Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...
community whom he described as living in "snow cottages" (i.e.
iglooAn igloo or snowhouse is a type of shelter built of snow, originally built by the Inuit....
s) and immortalized in Ross's painting
North Hendonhttp://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/northwpass/captions3.html.
The
north magnetic poleThe Earth's North Magnetic Pole is the point on the surface of the Northern Hemisphere at which the Earth's magnetic field points vertically downwards . Though geographically in the north, it is, by the direction of the magnetic field lines, physically the south pole of the Earth's magnetic field...
was at one point located here by James Ross. The nephew of John Ross, he was an officer on the expedition of 1829.
Further reading