The closest inhabited community is Kugluktuk, about 100 km (62 mi) south of Bernard Harbour.

The mainland shore of the bay consists of numerous stony points and intervening bights, with beaches of sand or gravel, behind which the land, within a distance of 3.2 kilometres (2 mi), is intersected by many ravines and rises to elevations of 37 metres (120 ft).

[7] From 1913 to 1916, Bernard Harbour was the base of the southern party of the Canadian Arctic Expedition (CAE), led by Rudolph Martin Anderson.

[8] In 1916, a few weeks after the CAE had left,[8] the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) opened a fur trade post on Bernard Harbour, originally called Fort Bacon, after Fur Trade Commissioner N.H. Bacon.

In 1930, the Hudson's Bay Company vessel Aklavik over-wintered at Bernard Harbour, where she sank, but was refloated and repaired.