What is Hudson Bay?

Hudson Bay is a vast inland sea in northeastern Canada with a surface area of about 1.23 million square kilometres, the second-largest bay in the world after the Bay of Bengal. It is shallow (average depth 100 metres, maximum depth 274 metres) and connects to the Atlantic Ocean via Hudson Strait between Baffin Island and northern Quebec. Hudson Bay is bordered by Manitoba and Ontario to the south, Quebec to the east, and Nunavut and the Northwest Territories to the north.

The bay is named after Henry Hudson, the English explorer who sailed into the bay in 1610 in search of the Northwest Passage. Hudson and his crew were stranded over the winter and Hudson, his son John, and seven others were set adrift in a small boat by mutineers in June 1611, never to be seen again. The bay's drainage basin covers about 3.86 million square kilometres including most of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, and parts of Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Major rivers entering the bay include the Nelson, Churchill, Albany, Moose, Eastmain, La Grande, and Great Whale.

The Hudson's Bay Company, chartered by King Charles II on May 2, 1670, was the first joint-stock company to receive a Royal Charter for a vast trade monopoly over the lands draining into Hudson Bay (Rupert's Land). The Company built trading posts at York Factory, Fort Albany, Moose Factory, Fort Churchill, and elsewhere, and ran the fur trade across most of present-day Canada for 200 years. The 1870 transfer of Rupert's Land to the Dominion of Canada brought most of the Prairies into Confederation. The HBC continues today as a department-store retailer (though much reduced) with its 1670 Royal Charter still in force.

Hudson Bay freezes from late November to early August, supporting the southernmost population of polar bears in the world (the Western Hudson Bay population of about 1,000 bears, denning along the Manitoba and Ontario coast). Climate change has shortened the sea-ice season by about 30 days since the 1980s, threatening polar bear viability. The Port of Churchill, Manitoba (Canada's only Arctic deep-water port, served by the Hudson Bay Railway) handles export shipments of grain and minerals. Hudson Strait Polar Sea Ice Inuit Land Use Mapping is a co-management initiative with Inuit hunters. The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975 covers Cree and Inuit territory along the eastern Hudson Bay coast in Quebec, and the Eeyou Marine Region Land Claims Agreement of 2010 covers the offshore Cree marine territory.