The population of 2,168 is divided between two settlements, the larger of which is Cambridge Bay (Nunavut) and the other Ulukhaktok (Northwest Territories).

[9] In 1839, Peter Warren Dease and Thomas Simpson followed its southeast coast and called it "Victoria Land".

[13] One of Roald Amundsen's men, Godfred Hansen, charted its east coast as far as Cape Nansen in 1905,[14] and in 1916 and 1917 Storker T. Storkerson, of Vilhjalmur Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition, charted its northeast coast, sighting the Storkerson Peninsula.

[15] In 2008 Clark Carter and Chris Bray became the first recorded people to walk across Victoria Island.

On the west are Amundsen Gulfmap4 and Banks Island,map5 which is separated from Victoria by a long sound called the Prince of Wales Strait.map6 To the south (from west to east) lie the Dolphin and Union Strait,map7 Austin Bay,map8 Coronation Gulfmap9 and the Dease Strait.map10 The southern waterways, and sometimes the Prince of Wales Strait, form part of the disputed Northwest Passage which the Government of Canada claims are Canadian Internal Waters, while other nations state they are either territorial waters or international waters.

In the east, pointing northwards, is the Storkerson Peninsula,map11 which ends with the Goldsmith Channel,map12 the body of water separating Victoria from Stefansson Island.map13 The Storkerson Peninsula is separated from the island's north-central areas by Hadley Bay,map14 a major inlet.

In the south, and pointing westwards, is the Wollaston Peninsula,map16 separated from the island's central areas by Prince Albert Sound.

[19] It was said by Andrew Hund in his book, Antarctica and the Arctic Circle: A Geographic Encyclopedia of the Earth's Polar Regions, that the island resembles a stylized maple leaf, the predominant symbol of Canada.

Autumns are short and crisp, with more frequent cloud cover starting to appear during August and with September being almost constantly cloudy.