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Singaijaq

Cape Haven Whaling Station ( Singnula Point, Singnija, Nugumiute, New Gummiute Bay) Hudson Strait, Nunavut 126 Ko Cape Haven Whaling Station ( Singnula Point, Singnija, Nugumiute, New Gummiute Bay) Hudson Strait, Nunavut

This area was also known to Qallunaat as Cape Haven, Singnula Point, Singnija, Nugumiute, New Gummiute Bay and other variations.

Singaijaq was an Inuit camp before the whalers came. It is located south of Cumberland Sound along the coast next to Cyrus Field Bay. American whalers were working there by 1860. They built a permanent whaling station at the eastern tip of Singaijaq on a mountainous island they named Cape Haven. It was not the most profitable of whaling grounds, but the island was an excellent lookout point. Ships bound for Hudson's Bay often overwintered there because the ice usually broke up fairly early in the year.

Sabellum Trading Company, Post at Singaijaq, Cape Haven 109 Ko Sabellum Trading Company, Post at Singaijaq, Cape Haven

Singaijaq was a meeting place for many groups of Inuit. Families from as far away as Hudson Strait came to Singaijaq to work for the whalers. The people on the west side of Cumberland Sound also had close ties to this station. In the early 1880s, nearly half of them had been born there.

The station at Singaijaq was temporarily closed in August 1896 after the American station manager, Captain Timothy Clisby, died while on a fishing trip in Cumberland Sound. Four Inuit and two Qallunaat also drowned. The following year, the 120 Inuit who had been living at Singaijaq moved to Umanaqjuaq (Blacklead Island), where many of them already had relatives. Most of them went home when the Singaijaq station reopened.

Singaijaq was the last American station remaining in the Cumberland Sound area. Around 1905, it too was taken over by the Scots. Its new manager was Osbert Clare Forsyth-Grant, known to Inuit as Mr. Grant, or Mitsiga. He lived at Singaijaq with Nangiaruk, the wife of his employee Gotilliaktuk. Mitsiga had children with Nangiaruk, and he also sent one of her other children, Ainiak, to England. The boy learned how to knit there and later taught this skill to his granddaughter, Mary Ipeelie of Iqaluit.

Mitsiga was either an unlucky or unskilled captain. In 1908, he had 65 Inuit from Singaijaq on his ship when it was wrecked in a storm about 90 miles from the station. The Inuit quickly built a tent out of a sail, lit warming fires with the blubber from the ship and kept everyone alive throughout the winter. Just three years later, Mitsiga's second ship, the Seduisante, ran aground at Toojak in Hudson Strait. The Qallunaat crew chose to stay on the leaking ship, but that night a storm came up and they all perished. There were also 61 Inuit on board. All of them went to shore, where they lived out the winter and then boated to Cape Dorset the following spring.

After Mitsiga's death, the Sabellum Company of Scotland purchased Singaijaq and used it as a trading post. In 1923, they sold it to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), which was quickly establishing a monopoly in Cumberland Sound. The HBC traders wanted fox skins, so the Inuit at Singaijaq relocated to better fox-trapping areas.

Inuit continued to visit the old camp. They kept more than 30 of their accordions, possibly acquired from Mitsiga, in an old cabin for safekeeping. They held dances there on their way to go caribou hunting every summer. The Sabellum Company had also left household items and even barrels full of blubber at the Singaijaq station. Inuit did not touch them for almost 20 years; they waited to see if the Qallunaat would come back. Finally, around 1939, Inuit dismantled the three station cabins. They used the lumber for tent frames and floors.