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KUGLUKTUK (pop. 1267) lies to the west of Cambridge Bay in the Canadian "mainland", sitting astride the Coppermine River close to the westernmost point of Nunavut (the river lends Kugluktuk its name, which means "place of rapids or moving water"). Yellowknife lies 600km away to the south. A relatively narrow sea passage, the Coronation Gulf, separates the mainland coast from Victoria Island at this point, a vital through-route on the Northwest Passage. The river has long been of primary importance in the region. Copper Inuit, so called because they fashioned tools and weapons from copper, converged at its mouth for a millennium to fish and hunt. In the twentieth century, as the numbers of caribou in the interior have declined, the Inuit have increasingly abandoned their seminomadic ways to settle on the coast. Today hunting and fishing still play a part in generating local income, though latterly tourism and oil and gas exploration have also contributed to local coffers. The river, which rises in the wilderness 360km north of Yellowknife, has also provided a "convenient" way of accessing the far north. It was used by Samuel Hearne, for example, the first white to reach the region, who paddled here on the orders of the Hudson's Bay Company to seek out the source of the copper being traded by the Inuit at company posts to the south. Today the river provides one of the continent's great canoe trips , most canoeists (or rafters) joining tours or chartering a plane from Yellowknife to the river's headwaters. The 325-kilometre trip downstream takes around ten days. The trip, among other things, offers sensational opportunities for watching wildlife, but you should also strike lucky with wildlife by walking or taking short tours from Kugluktuk itself. The most popular walk (20km one-way) is to the Bloody Falls , so called because a party of Inuit were massacred here following an argument with a group of Dene guides accompanying Hearne (relations between the two aboriginal groups were traditionally poor). If you don't fancy the walk - and it's tough going in places - you can pick up a boat trip up the river to the same point.
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