Canada has faced an ongoing challenge to assert control over what this country considers internal waters, but which the rest of the world — most notably the United States — sees as an international strait, Vancouver Sun reports.
The addition of the word “Canadian” to all official references to the passage is meant to symbolically bolster Canada’s sovereignty over the shipping lanes through the country’s Arctic islands.
Inuit leaders have argued that the renaming process initially lacked input from the North’s indigenous inhabitants. Many Inuit living along the sea route know the passage as “Tallurutik” — an Inuktitut word derived from linear landscape features along the coast of Devon Island and an associated tattooing ritual among Inuit women, Vancouver Sun writes.
