Prince Patrick Island

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prince Patrick Island, Northwest Territories, Canada.

Closer look at Prince Patrick Island, showing the Mould Bay weather station

NASA landsat image of Prince Patrick Island

Prince Patrick Island ( 76°45′0, N°119′30 ) is the westernmost of the Queen Elizabeth Islands in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The area of the island is 15,848 km² [1], making it the 55th largest island in the world and Canada's 14th largest island. It is icebound all year, making it one of the most inaccessible parts of Canada.

Located at the entrance of the McClure Strait, Prince Patrick Island is uninhabited and there are no known communities, past or present. A High Arctic Weather Station (H.A.W.S.) called Mould Bay was opened in 1948 as part of a joint Canada-U.S. military effort to support a weather station network. It had a temporary staff of between 10 and 40 people. The station was closed in 1997 owing to budget cuts and replaced with an automated weather station. The buildings still stand.

Prince Patrick Island was first explored in 1853 and (much later) named for Prince Arthur William Patrick, Duke of Connaught, who was Governor General 1911-16.

The island rises to only about 277 m [2], and the area is seismically active.

Prince Patrick Island is the setting for a work of fiction, the novel The Lost Ones (1961) by Ian Cameron. It was filmed as the Walt Disney Pictures film The Island at the Top of the World in 1970. The novel tells of a lost colony of Vikings living in a lost valley in the island, which, thanks to the volcanos on the island, is warm and habitable.