Coral Harbour is a small community located on Southampton Island at the north end of Hudson Bay. Its English name is derived from the fossilized coral that can be found in the adjacent waters of South Bay.

The plural Inuktitut form ‘Salliit’ is sometimes also used. Extraordinary archaeological sites of the ancient Tuniit (Dorset) culture are scattered around Southampton Island. Coral Harbour is becoming a very popular ecotourism base for some of the best walrus and polar bear watching in Nunavut.

Coral Harbour has a dry, windy climate. Summer temperatures range from 8°C to 24°C. Winter blizzards are common, with temperatures occasionally dropping to -50°C. The sea ice freezes in November and breaks up in early July.

Sallirmiut (‘inhabitants of Salliq’) lived on this island from 500 BC until the winter of 1902-1903 when they all died from a typhus epidemic introduced by an infected Scottish whaler. The Sallirmiut were the last vestige of the ancient Tuniit (Dorset) people and may have intermarried with Thule people before they became extinct.

Dorset Culture (‘Tuniit’ or ‘Sivullirmiut’): 500 BC to 1500 AD
Thule Culture (Proto-Inuit): 1000 AD to 1600 AD
Inuit Culture (Eskimo): 1600 AD to present-day
Within a decade of their tragic demise by disease, the island was repopulated by Aivilingmiut (‘people of the walrus place’) from the mainland areas of Repulse Bay and Chesterfield Inlet.

The first recorded European person to ever visit this island was the Welsh explorer Thomas Button in 1613 when he was trying to locate the Northwest Passage and any trace of the English explorer Henry Hudson whose crew mutinied in 1611.

From the late 1700s to the early 1900s, whaling vessels hunting bowhead whales frequented the area of Hudson Bay and Foxe Basin. The Hudson Bay Company chose the current site of Coral Harbour for a trading post in 1924. Anglican and Catholic missions soon followed.

In WWII a United States Air Force base was constructed here as part of the Crimson Route delivering fighter aircraft to Britain. During the Cold War years the airbase was a depot site serving the DEW line. Materials arrived by ship to be flown north. Most local Inuit families continued to live a nomadic lifestyle, moving between winter and summer hunting camps around the island until 1950 when the day school was built in Coral Harbour. The community has continued to grow and develop ever since.

There are roads and trails around the island for hiking, mountain biking and exploring by ATV in the summer months and several excellent spots to fish for arctic char near town.

Southampton Island is home to many species of wildlife including handsome herds of caribou and fine flocks of snow geese.

At nearby Native Point there is a sacred archaeological site of the Sallirmiut people, the last descendants of Tuniit (Dorset) culture that is sometimes called ‘The Lost City of the North.’

‘Salliq’ artists, seamstresses and craftspeople produce a range of carvings, articles of traditional clothing and other handicrafts.