Ungava

Ungava, peninsular section of northern Quebec province, Canada, bounded by the Hudson Strait (north), Ungava Bay and Labrador (east), the Eastmain River (south), and the Hudson Bay (west). Physically, Ungava is a part of the Canadian Shield, a rocky, glacial-scoured plateau characterized by innumerable lakes and thin, poorly drained soils. After the Quebec-Newfoundland border was established in 1927, the term Ungava was generally applied to the repetitive northern Quebec part of the peninsula (Ungava Peninsula) occupying about 240,000 square miles (622,000 square km), whereas the term Labrador (q.v.) referred to the Newfoundland portion; the geographic usage of both terms, however, is employed irrespective of political divisions. Economic activity is centred along the Quebec-Newfoundland border, an area with immense iron-ore deposits, where the region’s largest towns of Schefferville in Quebec and Labrador City and Wabush in Newfoundland have sprung up since exploitation of the deposits began in the 1950s.