DID YOU KNOW?

Canada is home to roughly 15,000 polar bears, or about 2/3 of the world’s total population. Polar bears inhabit the northern regions of several provinces, but most of the population is found in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

Since 1848, more than 90 different search expeditions have attempted to find Franklin's expedition or evidence of its fate. The only written record is a single sheet of Admiralty paper found in a stone cairn in 1859. Handwritten notes indicated the ships had been locked in ice for 19 months before being abandoned on April 22, 1848, when survivors moved onto King William Island and tried to reach the mainland.

In 2008, Parks Canada's Underwater Archaeology Team  (UAT) and partners embarked on a new annual search for the lost ships using underwater technology and Inuit testimony. On September 1, 2014, a helicopter team uncovered two objects that shifted the focus to the shallow waters of Wilmot and Crampton Bay, where HMS Erebus was discovered the next day.

In 2016, HMS Terror was discovered nearly 100 kilometres south of the point where she was thought to have been crushed by ice. A resident of Gjoa Haven reported seeing a tall piece of wood rising up through the ice. Based on this account, a research vessel detoured to Terror Bay, where HMS Terror was discovered resting on the seafloor.