Canadians Naive about the North: Magazine's Survey

Penguins, igloos, and eskimos are just some of the misconceptions Canadians have about the Arctic.

A small survey done by a Yellowknife-based magazine uncovered some unsettling trends about Canadians' knowledge of the Arctic: More than two-thirds of respondents said Inuit live in igloos, 38 per cent didn't know the term "Inuit" has replaced "Eskimo," and only a quarter knew that penguins don't live in the Arctic. Granted, the sample size for Up Here's survey was only 303 people and these results are by no means definitive. Residents of B.C. and the Prairies scored a lot better than those east of Manitoba, with people from the West giving answers that were "significantly more accurate" on 15 of 28 questions, suggesting there could be a northern naivete among central and Atlantic Canadians. Not all is lost, though: Three-quarters of respondents knew there wasn't a town called North Pole.