The One Minute Geographer: Baffin Island
Looking for an exotic spot for your summer vacation? How about Baffin Island, Canada. Exotic doesn’t have to be tropical, does it?
Baffin Island is a paradise for wildlife viewing. You can see polar bears, Arctic foxes and wolves, many species of geese and ducks, snowy owls, seals, walruses, narwhals, even beluga whales.
Baffin island is the fifth largest island in the world (after Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo and Madagascar). Baffin is about 20% larger than California, so if the island were a US state, only Alaska and Texas would be bigger. The southern half of the island is large enough to contain two large lakes, one of them, Nettilling Lake, is just a bit smaller than Lake Ontario. The coast is studded with fjords.
First, let’s realize how far north we are. The Arctic Circle cuts off the southernmost bottom third of the island. Iqaluit, the largest town, is about the latitude of Iceland or the middle of Norway. The northernmost part of the island extends about 250 miles farther north than the northernmost point of Alaska. This is the land of the midnight sun and the aurora borealis, the Northern Lights.
