History
On Henry Hudson's last mission in 1610, he mapped the coast and named the cape "Wolstenholme" to honour Sir John Wolstenholme (1562-1639), an English merchant who sponsored the expedition and was interested in finding the Northwest Passage. Shortly after, mutineers from Hudson's expedition clashed with local Inuit on nearby Digges Islands, the second recorded encounter between Europeans and Inuit. (The first was in 1606 when the expedition of John Knight came under attack on the coast of northern Labrador. Knight and three others from the crew of the Hopedale disappeared after going ashore in a boat. The remaining eight crew members waited for Knight and his party, but the following day came under attack by a large number of hostile natives. They managed to drive off the natives and eventually found their way to the safety of open water off the coast.) In 1697, Captain Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and his crew, in search of commercial opportunities in Hudson Bay, conducted the first commercial trades with Inuit at Cape Wolstenholme.
In 1909, the Hudson's Bay Company established a trading post called Wolstenholme in Erik Cove (62°32′00″N 77°24′00″W / 62.53333°N 77.40000°W / 62.53333; -77.40000), a small bay just east of the cape. Its first factor was Ralph Parsons who was to develop the Arctic Fox fur trade by establishing new relationships with the Inuit, who already hunted the fox. No Inuit visited or traded at the post for 2 years but eventually it turned profitable and operated until 1947. Remnants of the post can still be found here.
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