Whapmagoostui, Quebec
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Whapmagoostui ("place of the beluga" in Cree) is the northernmost Cree village in Quebec, located at the mouth of the Grande Rivière de la Baleine (Great Whale River) on the coast of Hudson Bay in Nunavik, Quebec, Canada. It has a population of 778 people (2001 Canada census). About 500 people, mostly Inuit, live in the neighbouring northern village of Kuujjuarapik. The community is only accessible by air (Kuujjuarapik Airport) and, in late summer, by boat. Whapmagoostui is about 250 kilometres north of the nearest Cree village, Chisasibi.
Although the permanent cohabitation of Inuit and Crees at the mouth of the Grande Rivière de la Baleine only goes back to the year 1950, the two nations were rubbing shoulders in this area for a very long time; Inuit close to the coast and the Crees more in the interior lands.
[edit] History
While the Cree have hunted and fished along the Hudson Bay coast long before the arrival of Europeans, it was not until the middle of the eighteenth century when a Hudson's Bay Company trading post was built here called Fort Richmond. This was the beginning of a settlement also known as Poste-de-la-Baleine or Great Whale River. A protestant mission settled there in the 1880s. Yet the Cree would not settle here permanently. They only used it as a summer encampment.
The American army opened a military base at the mouth of the Great Whale River during the Second World War, using Inuit and Cree workers. And in 1955 a Mid-Canada Line radar station was built at this place. Though the radar station was not operational for long and closed in 1965, it established the village permanently.
