Hudson Bay, sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern
Canada, with a surface area of 1,230,000 square kilometres. It drains a very large area, about
3,861,400 square kilometres, that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta,
most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota,
Minnesota, and Montana. The southern arm of Hudson Bay is called James Bay.
The Eastern Cree name for Hudson and James Bay is Wînipekw or Wînipâkw, meaning muddy
or brackish water. Lake Winnipeg is similarly named by the local Cree, as is the location
for the City of Winnipeg.
Description Hudson Bay encompasses 1,230,000 square kilometres,
making it the second-largest bay in the world. The bay is relatively shallow and is considered
an epicontinental sea, with an average depth of about 100 metres. It is about 1,370 km
long and 1,050 km wide. On the east it is connected with the Atlantic Ocean by Hudson
Strait; on the north, with the Arctic Ocean by Foxe Basin, and Fury and Hecla Strait.
Geographic coordinates: 78° to 95° W, 51° to 70° N.
Hudson Bay is part of the North Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes the Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait
basins are considered part of the Arctic Ocean despite the fact that their waters flow predominantly
to the Atlantic. Some sources describe Hudson Bay as a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean,
or the Arctic Ocean. History
English explorers and colonists named Hudson Bay after Henry Hudson, who explored the bay
beginning August 2, 1610, on his ship the Discovery. On his fourth voyage to North America,
Hudson worked his way around the west coast of Greenland and into the bay, mapping much
of its eastern coast. The Discovery became trapped in the ice over the winter, and the
crew survived onshore at the southern tip of James Bay. When the ice cleared in the
spring, Hudson wanted to explore the rest of the area, but the crew mutinied on June
22, 1611. They left Hudson and others adrift in a small boat. No one knows the fate of
Hudson and the crewmembers stranded with him, but historians see no evidence that they survived
for long afterwards. In 1668, the Nonsuch reached the bay and successfully
traded for beaver pelts, leading to the creation of the Hudson's Bay Company, which still bears
the historic name. The HBC negotiated a trading monopoly from the British crown for the Hudson
Bay watershed, called Rupert's Land. France contested this grant by sending several military
expeditions to the region, but abandoned its claim in the Treaty of Utrecht. See Anglo-French
conflicts on Hudson Bay. During this period, the Hudson's Bay Company
built several forts and trading posts along the coast at the mouth of the major rivers.
The strategic locations were bases for inland exploration. More importantly, they were used
as trading posts with the indigenous peoples who came to the posts with furs from their
trapping season. The HBC shipped the furs on to Europe and continued to use these posts
until the beginning of the 20th century. The port of Churchill is still today an important
shipping link for trade with Europe and Russia. In 1870, when HBC's trade monopoly was abolished,
it ceded Rupert's Land—an area of approximately 3.9 million km²—to Canada as part of the
Northwest Territories. Starting in 1913, the Bay was extensively charted by the Canadian
Government's CSS Acadia to develop it for navigation. This mapping progress resulted
in the establishment of Churchill, Manitoba, as a deep-sea port for wheat exports in 1929,
after unsuccessful attempts at Port Nelson. Due to a change in naming conventions, Hudson's
Bay is now called Hudson Bay. As a result, the names of the body of water and the company
are often mistaken for one another. Geography
Extent The International Hydrographic Organization
defines the northern limit of Hudson Bay as follows:
A line from Nuvuk Point to Leyson Point, the Southeastern extreme of Southampton Island,
through the Southern and Western shores of Southampton Island to its Northern extremity,
thence a line to Beach Point on the Mainland.
Climate
Hudson Bay was the growth centre for the main ice sheet that covered northern North America
during the last Ice Age. The whole region has very low year-round average temperatures.
Water temperature peaks at 8°-9°C on the western side of the bay in late summer. It
is largely frozen over from mid-December to mid-June when it usually clears from its eastern
end westwards and southwards. A steady increase in regional temperatures over the last 100
years has been reflected in a lengthening of the ice-free period which was as short
as four months in the late 17th century. Waters
Hudson Bay has a lower average salinity level than that of ocean water. The main causes
are the low rate of evaporation; the large volume of terrestrial runoff entering the
bay; and the limited connection with the Atlantic Ocean and its higher salinity. The annual
freezing and thawing of sea ice, which is about three times the annual river flow into
the bay, significantly alters the salinity of the surface layer.
One consequence of the lower salinity of the bay is that the freezing point of the water
is higher than in the rest of the world's oceans, thus decreasing the time the bay remains
ice-free. Shores
The western shores of the bay are a lowland known as the "Hudson Bay Lowlands" which covers
324,000 km². The area is drained by a large number of rivers and has formed a characteristic
vegetation known as muskeg. Much of the landform has been shaped by the actions of glaciers
and the shrinkage of the bay over long periods of time. Signs of numerous former beachfronts
can be seen far inland from the current shore. A large portion of the lowlands in the province
of Ontario is part of the Polar Bear Provincial Park, and a similar portion of the lowlands
in Manitoba is contained in Wapusk National Park, the latter location being a significant
Polar Bear maternity denning area. In contrast, most of the eastern shores form
the western edge of the Canadian Shield in Quebec. The area is rocky and hilly. Its vegetation
is typically boreal forest, and to the north, tundra.
Measured by shoreline, Hudson Bay is the largest bay in the world.
Islands There are many islands in Hudson Bay, mostly
near the eastern coast. All are part of the territory Nunavut. One group of islands is
the Belcher Islands. Another group includes the Ottawa Islands.
Geology The Bay is near the center of a major gravity
anomaly which has been mapped in some detail by the GRACE satellites. Current theory suggests
that about two-thirds of this effect is due to downwards mantle convection under the Bay
area, while one-third is due to post-glacial rebound since the Laurentide ice sheet melted.
Lands to the west of the Bay are rising as much as 17 millimetres per year.
Some geologists disagree about what created the semicircular feature, known as the Nastapoka
Arc, of the bay. The overwhelming consensus is that it is an arcuate boundary of tectonic
origin between the Belcher Fold Belt and undeformed basement of the Superior Craton created during
the Trans-Hudson orogen. Some geologists have argued that Hudson's
Bay is possibly related to a Precambrian extraterrestrial impact and have compared it to Mare Crisium
on the Moon. However, no credible evidence for such an impact crater has been found by
regional magnetic, Bouguer gravity, and geologic studies.
Coastal communities The coast of Hudson Bay is extremely sparsely
populated; there are only about a dozen villages. Some of these were founded as trading posts
in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Hudson's Bay Company, making them some of the oldest
settlements in Western Canada. With the closure of the HBC posts and stores in the second
half of the 20th century, many coastal villages are now almost exclusively populated by Cree
and Inuit people. Two main historic sites along the coast were York Factory and Prince
of Wales Fort. Some of the more prominent communities along
the Hudson Bay coast are: Puvirnituq, Quebec;
Arviat, Nunavut; Churchill, Manitoba;
Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. Military development
The Hudson's Bay Company built forts as fur trade strongholds against the French or other
possible invaders. One example is York Factory with angled walls to help defend the fort.
In the 1950s, during the Cold War, a few sites along the coast became part of the Mid-Canada
Line, watching for a potential Soviet bomber attack over the North Pole. The only Arctic
deep-water port in Canada is the Port of Churchill, located at Churchill, Manitoba.
Economy Arctic Bridge
The longer periods of ice-free navigation and the reduction of Arctic Ocean ice coverage
have led to Russian and Canadian interest in the potential for commercial trade routes
across the Arctic and into Hudson Bay. The so-called "Arctic Bridge" would link Churchill,
Manitoba, and the Russian port of Murmansk. See also
Archives of Manitoba Great Recycling and Northern Development Canal
Lake Agassiz List of Hudson Bay rivers
Tyrrell Sea References
Atlas of Canada, online version. Some references of geological/impact structure
interest include: Rondot, Jehan. Recognition of eroded astroblemes.
Earth-Science Reviews 35, 4, p. 331-365. Wilson, J. Tuzo Comparison of the Hudson Bay
arc with some other features. In: Science, History and Hudson Bay, v. 2. Beals, C. S.,
p. 1015–1033.