This dataset is a component of the PAN-Arctic data collection of benthic BIOtas (PANABIO) and has been collated during the Census of Marine Life project Arctic Ocean Diversity (ArcOD; http://www.arcodiv.org/). It contains a total of 7,203 occurrence and abundance records of 793 macrobenthic taxa (species to genus level) identified in 235 grab samples taken at 235 stations located in various Canadian Arctic seas at water depths of 1–970 m during 24 cruises between 1955 and 1975. The dataset is also available in a PostgreSQL-based data warehouse that can be accessed and queried through an open-access frontend web service at https://critterbase.awi.de/panabio.