Ken Jennings Finds One More Thing Canada Has That No One Else Does

Victoria Island is separated from the tundra of northern Canada by the icy Coronation Gulf. The world’s eighth largest island, Victoria (or “Kitlineq” to the Inuit locals) is of interest to map geeks for one reason and one reason alone: About 75 miles inland from its southern coast, you'll find a series of long finger lakes. In one of them is an island surrounding a smaller lake, and in that smaller lake, at exactly 69.793° N, 108.241° W, sits a narrow island about a fifth of a mile long. Yes, this nameless, four-acre island is the world’s largest island-in-a-lake-on-an-island-in-a-lake-on-an-island.

View Victoria Island, Nunavut, Unnamed Island in a larger map
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For many years, trivia buffs actually credited this dubious distinction to a tiny island in a crater lake on Volcano Island in the middle of Lake Taal on the Philippine island of Luzon—but thanks to Google Earth, we now know that the unnamed Nunavut island is much larger.
Canada is also home to the world’s largest island-in-a-lake (Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron) and the world’s largest lake-on-an-island (Nettilling Lake on Baffin Island). The world’s largest island-in-a-lake-on-an-island, however, is the volcanic island of Samosir, in the middle of Sumatra’s Lake Toba. The deep-blue tropical waters and Batak culture of Lake Toba make it a much more popular tourist destination than the icy Canadian lake.
Has anyone ever actually set foot on the tiny Canadian sub-sub-sub-island? Probably not. Victoria Island, though bigger than the state of Idaho, has a population of less than 2,000. (People, that is. There are tens of thousands of caribou and musk-ox on the island, but few of them are map nerds.)
The tundras of Siberia and northern Canada are full of spidery, island-dotted lakes like the ones on Victoria Island, so it’s possible that there’s a larger island-in-a-lake-on-an-island-in-a-lake-on-an-island out there on an Internet map somewhere, just waiting for someone to look at the pixels. That digital discoverer could be you! Will you name it “Ken Jennings Lake” if you find it? Just a thought.