Dear Everyone
This letter has details about our trip to Winnipeg –
Churchill – Winnipeg – Toronto – Chicago
Day 1
Our flight to Winnipeg was uneventful. We were met at the airport by Natural Habitat
personnel (the organization and professionalism of the Natural Habitat group
was outstanding, and we would like to take one of their other trips
someday). It was cloudy outside, but
nevertheless we were able to see the partial eclipse through the clouds—an unexpected
bonus.
We drove through Winnipeg to the Fort Garry Hotel, an old hotel with
wide hallways and large rooms. It was also hosting the North American Society for Bat Research, but the one young (just started grad school) participant we talked to did not know po Bruce Patterson After a
bit of unpacking, we went through the train station
(designed by the same architect who designed Grand central Station in New York
to The Forks where we
had a bison hot dog and smoked chicken poutine, wandered through the touristic
stores a bit, and then back to the hotel.
We picked up arctic parkas and boots that Nat Hab provides to their
clients. That evening we had an opening dinner with our expedition leader,
Giulia Ciampini, and the fourteen other people on our tour—a fun group and an
engaging leader . Giulia went over some
of the specifics of our tour - - note all doors, including car doors are
unlocked in Churchill, in case there is a bear in the vicinity, and you need to
run for shelter. We also filled out
forms, ordering in advance for different dinner meals at the local restaurants.
The next morning we all gathered in the hotel lobby, and
then back to the airport for a private charter (woohoo, no security!) to
Churchill. There are no roads to
Churchill, you either have to fly, or take the train (there are two or three
trains (unclear) each week, and it takes about 2.5 days (in perfect conditions)
to go the 1200 miles north). On the way
we flew over northern prairie farmland, to taiga/boreal forest, and tundra. Churchill is at the intersection of three
biomes: tundra, maritime (Hudson’s Bay and the Churchill River), and taiga. As such, it also is the intersection of three
(four?) cultures: Inuit, First Nations
(mostly Swampy Cree), Metis, and Europeans.
Churchill is a town of under 1000 inhabitants, but it is packed with tourists for three seasons: polar bear season from early October through mid-November, Aurora Borealis in January-February, and Beluga whale/migratory bird season in the mid-summer. There are three other Nat-Hab polar bear groups along with ours, and there must be another 5-6 more from other tour operators. We our stating at one of the five small hotels in town, but there are also two ‘tundra’ hotels, where people can stay in converted tundra rovers (this might be fun for one night). There are also only about 5 restaurants in town, and you have to make your time slot, or your tables are given away,
Anyway, after getting on a small tour bus, we drive into
town where we have lunch at one of the restaurants. Then we drive to Cape
Merry and the Prince
of Wales Fort. The fort was a failed
attempt of the English to keep the French out of Hudson’s Bay On the way there
we hear some gunshots - - some of the bear wardens are firing ‘bangers’
(flash-bangs) to scare away a bear that is too close to town. In fact, when we get to Cape Merry, there is
a warden on the rock with binoculars and a shotgun. Far out in the distant water I think I can
see a small white blob that might be a bear swimming north. We also see snow buntings
(there are thousands of them) and maybe some common eiders. We also spot a ‘cross fox’, which is a red
fox with dark fur.
Other highlights of this first afternoon are greywacke stone covered with
lichen, including elegant
sunburst and map lichen, dwarf willows, tamarack (larch) trees,
flag trees. On
the drive back to the hotel we pass the abandoned granary. This and the port
were built in the 1920s as an alternate route to southern wheat farmers, but it
has been out of operation since 2016 (additionally, the rail line closed for
several months in 2017, when the melt off of a huge blizzard flooded out the
tracks, and no repair was being done while the rail company (Colorado based
OmniTrax) and the Canadian government bickered over responsibility. Finally, a group of First Nation and industry
investors formed a consortium to buy that part of the line. The port is just barely alive.
Back to the hotel, we get into the bus to literally go to
the tundra pub which is the next door building.
Once the sun goes down you are not allowed to even walk fifty feet
outside - - a
bear could get you. I have a dry elk meatloaf, while Cindy has wild boar
sausage.
After dinner we hear a talk by a Churchill resident named Georgina. She was about 70 years old. Her family was completely disrupted by the horrific Residential school system, where indigenous peoples were separated from their children - - this practice did not stop until the 1990s. Her family, herself included, battled alcoholism and drug dependency, but she eventually found her way out, and had represented Churchill in local and national government.
Day 3
We get up pretty early, have breakfast in the hotel, and
then get in our van and drive 20 minutes up Launch Road (so called because the
army base here launched thousands
of rockets from the 1950s-1970s).
The Polar rover docking station is nearby. The Rovers look like super
large converted school buses. They have six gargantuan wheels. They are about
ten feet wide, and would seat about 36 people if full. There is a viewing station off the back of
the bus. The road is just tundra scraped
of moss from the old army days, and erosion and wear over the years has exposed
a lot of boulders. Sometimes the rover
barely goes 1-2 miles per hour. People
in the rovers with fitbits reported that a day in the rover was equivalent to
20,000 steps because of the amount of jostling.
The rovers go through small ponds, but always stay on the old army roads
to lessen the environmental impact.
Anytime we see an animal, the rover stops and everyone is as quiet as
can be, except for the clicking of cameras.
It’s amazing how camouflaged the animals are. An arctic fox rolled up nose to tail looks
like a grey rock, and a curled up polar bear looks like a white boulder. Nevertheless, we are successful in seeing
polar bears, red foxes, arctic foxes, myriad snow buntings, two resident tundra
swans, willow ptarmigans, ravens, and either a pacific or a red-throated loon.. We have a pretty good lunch in the rover,
which includes hot soup, salad, a sandwich, and dessert.
We are actually pretty tired from all the jouncing on the ‘misery
mile’, as our driver Lauren calls one particularly bad stretch. We drive back to Churchill, and Cindy and I
check out the next door grocery store.
Everything is quite expensive, especially fresh produce. A small watermelon costs $15, and a single
bell pepper is $3. Everything else is
pretty expensive – a gallon of milk is $7.50 (almost double the Chicago price). A jar of pasta sauce is $5. Most of the people who live here year round
obviously rely on hunting and foraging to supplement their diets, especially
given that good jobs are pretty scarce.
They do have subsidized housing; however.
Before dinner we hear an excellent but depressing presentation
from people at Polar Bears
International, who have an outreach outpost during tourist season. There are 19 subpopulations of Polar
Bears. The one in the southern Hudson is
about 620 bears. There might be 1000
bears total in the Hudson Bay, and 16,000 in Canada. There might be 20,000-25,000 bears worldwide.
Twenty years ago it was pretty common to
see bear mothers with two or three cubs, now they usually only have one or two,
because they don’t have sufficient nutrition to have larger litters. When the
sea ice goes, the whole ecosystem from ice algae to krill to fish to seals to
bears will collapse. The bears come to
land and can fast for about four months in the summer, but afterwards need to
get back on the ice - - but the ice melts sooner and reforms later each year,
and the bears are getting close this year to unrecoverable starvation. This doesn’t look to improve in future years.
Day 4
Back to the rover. We follow pretty much the same route as the day before, but this time come upon a very curious bear who walks up to our rover, and stands up to peer at another rover in front of us. We see all of the same animals as the day before, as well as dunlin (a shorebird). On the way back to town we see some bear wardens chasing a bear away from town, and we stop to see Miss Piggy, an old air cargo plane that crashed outside of Churchill in 1979 (no one was injured).
We go dog sledding at Wapusk adventures. The owner, Dave Daley, is a famous Metis
musher. He has thirty dogs, and his food
costs are about $30,000 a year - - so the loss of tourism due to Covid really
hurt him, and he is not sure if things will ever come back. He gave a very engaging talk about dog
sledding, and the three different positions (lead dog, swing/team dogs, and
wheel dogs) that the dogs can have on the line, which require different temperaments
and stamina. Afterwards, we all get to
ride the “Ididamile” course pulled on a wheeled dog cart instead of a sled
(because there isn’t any snow yet). Dave’s place is on the edge of the boreal
forest. Since all the trees are on
permafrost, sometimes the underlying ice heaves, and the trees can be tilted to
all angles, giving the name of ‘drunken forest’. The trees are mostly black spruce and
tamarack.
The sled dogs are mostly rescue animals, not big huskies or
malamutes. They are pretty feisty;
however, and eager to go for a run. Some are wearing booties! Cindy and I get
pulled around the course. Our female French
driver tells us that the only thing she hunts are ptarmigans (there are a bunch
on the course), and that they taste something like beef (which is a surprise; I
would have thought pheasant or chicken). Mr. Daley also feeds ravens, and there
is a family that hangs out in the dog yard - - they recently killed an
interloping raven that tried to join the family group. Mr. Daley recommends a
book, The
Northwest is Our Mother, about the Metis, but unfortunately it only
available by Hoopla on our library system - - I will have to see if Hinsdale
will purchase a copy.
Afterwards we investigated different souvenir shops, one of
which was quite interesting with a suit made of polar bear skin, and lots of
beaded clothing. We had lunch and then
visited the train station, that had a small natural history museum, and then
the giant community center, which has a pool, a hockey rink, indoor playground,
basketball courts, health clinic, grammar school, public library, and
administrative offices.
For dinner we went back to the polar rover, and had dinner
on the tundra. Prior to the dinner we heard from one of our tour group that Air
Canada had cancelled a flight from Winnipeg to Toronto - - the same flight we
needed to be on to make our connection to Chicago on Friday. Air Canada (or United, who we had booked the itinerary
with) neglected to inform any of us of the cancelled flight, nor had we been
rebooked. Cindy scrambled with United to
get us seats on different flights, which basically meant staying in Winnipeg an
extra 5-6 hours, and then finding an airport hotel in Toronto so we could take
an early morning flight to Chicago Saturday.
Day 6
On our last day we went to the Inuit museum, and then drove
around town looking at murals, and seeing more bears, a weasel, and an arctic
hare (spotted by Cindy!). We may also
have seen a peregrine falcon near the granary.
We flew back to Winnipeg, and had a farewell dinner at the Fort Garry
hotel
Day 7
Because of our travel snafu, Cindy and I had some extra
time, and we went to see the Canadian Museum
of Human Rights. This museum has
impressive architecture. Like a reverse
Guggenheim, you start at the bottom, and walk up a series of ramps to the ‘tower
of hope’. Sadly, it tells a pretty
dismal story of racism in Canada and elsewhere, with stories of prejudice
against indigenes, people of African origin, and Asians, and pogroms against
Jews, Armenians, etc. They try to be
more hopeful as you rise in the museum, but optimistic stories are few, and
looking at the world today, it’s hard to feel very happy about what will happen
next.
Afterwards we walk around downtown Winnipeg, where we go to
a food court that has: South Asian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern and
other ethnic fare. That makes me feel
more confident about the world going forward than the museum! On the way back we visit the Winnipeg public
library, a nice building with nice librarians.
Our flight to Toronto is delayed, but we eventually arrive,
and wait forever for our hotel shuttle (we decide to take a lyft to the airport
the next morning). Our hotel room is
pretty crappy, with a non-functioning phone, and two queen beds, one of which
has a damp mattress and sheets. A cell phone call to the desk clerk resulted in
being offered to try to find another room, but it was late and we needed to be
up in 6 hours, so we just stayed put and avoided the wet bed.
Day 8
We get up early, have a smooth check-in, easily get through
the pre-immigration/customs line (due to global entry) and fly home with a
surprise upgrade to business class.
Extra photos taken by other people on our trip with real cameras and good lenses:
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