Hudson Bay

Hudson Bay is a vast inland sea in northeastern Canada and one of the world’s largest bays, connected to both Atlantic and Arctic waters and fed by an enormous drainage basin spanning much of central Canada and parts of the northern United States. Its relatively fresh, shallow water helps it freeze for much of the year. Known to Cree communities long before European naming, it entered English history with Henry Hudson’s voyage in 1610. The bay became a center of the North American fur trade through the Hudson’s Bay Company, later served shipping through Churchill, and remains important for its varied shores, Arctic wildlife, Indigenous history, and northern ecology.