Little Cornwallis Island is one of the

Canadian Arctic islands The Arctic Archipelago, also known as the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, is an archipelago lying to the north of the Canadian continental mainland, excluding Greenland (an autonomous territory of Denmark). Situated in the northern extremity of ...

Nunavut Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' ...

, Canada. It is located at 75°30'N 96°30'W, between Cornwallis Island and Bathurst Island in

McDougall Sound McDougall Sound is an Arctic waterway in Qikiqtaaluk, Nunavut, Canada. It is located between southeastern Bathurst Island and western Cornwallis island. The sound's southern mouth opens to the Parry Channel, and beyond that, to the Barrow Stra ...

, and measures . It is uninhabited. Little Cornwallis Island was the home to

Polaris Mine Polaris zinc mine was a former underground mining (hard rock), underground mine on Little Cornwallis Island in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian territory of Nunavut (Northwest Territories prior to Nunavut's official separation). ...

, the most poleward base-metal

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

in the world. In 1960 a vast concentration of

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

and

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

was discovered on the island during mapping for oil permits.

Cominco Teck Resources Limited, known as Teck Cominco until late 2008, is a diversified natural resources company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is engaged in mining and mineral development, including coal for the steelmaking indust ...

acquired land in the area and a gravity survey in 1970 detected a large anomaly. By 1973 surface drilling and underground development had outlined the Polaris ore body and defined reserves of about 25 million tons grading approximately 14% zinc and 4% lead. A

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

facility was constructed on a barge at Trois-Rivières, Quebec and towed to the island; arriving in mid August 1981. Production commenced in 1982. The mile-long gravel runway allowed aircraft as large as the

Boeing 727 The Boeing 727 is an American narrow-body airliner that was developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. After the heavy 707 quad-jet was introduced in 1958, Boeing addressed the demand for shorter flight lengths from smaller airpo ...

and

Boeing 737 The Boeing 737 is a narrow-body aircraft produced by Boeing at its Renton Factory in Washington. Developed to supplement the Boeing 727 on short and thin routes, the twinjet retains the 707 fuselage width and six abreast seating with two un ...

to service the mine. The mine was closed in August 2002 as forecast due to depletion of the ore body. From 1982 to 2002 the mine processed 21 million tons of ore grading 3.72% lead and 15.81% zinc, producing 733,800 tons of lead metal and 2.8 million tons of zinc metal in concentrate. A two-year, $53 million decommissioning and reclamation program was completed in September 2004. During the operating lifetime of the mine, there was a company-owned camp to provide lodgings to miners, and the community and mine was serviced by

Bell Canada Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in t ...

and then by

Northwestel Northwestel Inc. (stylized as NorthwesTel) is a Canadian telecommunications company that is the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) and long-distance carrier in the territories of Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Originally est ...

External links

Exploration history and mineral potential of the central Arctic Zn-Pb District, Nunavut

Little Cornwallis Island
in the

Atlas of Canada The Atlas of Canada (french: L'Atlas du Canada) is an online atlas published by Natural Resources Canada that has information on every city, town, village, and hamlet in Canada. It was originally a print atlas, with its first edition being publishe ...

- Toporama; Natural Resources Canada {{Subdivisions of Nunavut Islands of the Queen Elizabeth Islands Uninhabited islands of Qikiqtaaluk Region