The northernmost community in the NWT is located on Banks Island in the High Arctic. Sachs Harbour is the only settlement on Banks Island. It is home to about 130 people,  the largest colony of geese in North America and the world’s largest population of muskoxen. 

It is the ancestral territory of the Inuvialuit. Sachs Harbour’s was established a permanent settlement in 1929, when three Inuit families from the Mackenzie Delta sailed here to harvest valuable pelts from the area’s flourishing white fox population. Its name comes from The Mary Sachs, a vessel in explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913.

Visitors to this community, also known as Ikaahuk or “place to which you cross,” can meander through the serene Aulavik National Park with its bird sanctuaries and the northernmost navigable river in Canada, the Thomsen. The Visitor Reception Centre in town can guide you to this beautiful park.

Sachs Harbour can be reached by plane from Inuvik.