In 1956 Cape Dorset was a tiny community consisting of the few red and white wood-frame Hudson’s Bay Company buildings, a small nursing station and the government day school. The Anglican church, built in 1953, and the Catholic mission house, established in 1938, sat one in each of two valleys flanking the center of town. The few Inuit residents lived in small, prefabricated houses supplied by the government, or in summer tents dotting the shoreline near the trading post or the missions. Over the course of the next decade, more and more families would leave their permanent camps and relocate to the community, drawn toward greater economic security and the first school for their children.

Now, almost 50 years later, Cape Dorset is a thriving community of just under 1300 people, and growing into an administrative centre for the Government of Nunavut. The changes that have taken place are profound, as the region’s Inuit population has left behind their traditional lifestyle. Nevertheless, they strive to retain important elements of their traditional culture – their language, their connection to the land and its resources – while adapting to the new realities of work, school, business and community life.

Click here for photographs by Tessa Macintosh.

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Click here for photographs by John Reeves