On the day of our departure from Seal River Lodge, we had an hour or two at Churchill before the Calm Air flight back to Winnipeg. Remote small towns are so interesting, and in retrospect, we would have liked to overnight here for a better look, but in the end, we had to be satisfied with Churchill Wild local representative Glen taking us around town in a mini-bus. While he showed us around town, Glen explained that he is proudly related to the orginal founders and builders of Churchill Wild, Mike and Jeanne Reimer. We didn't get to see inside the apparently interesting Community Centre, or the town railway station constructed in the classical Canadian style, or anything out of town.
Aerial view of Churchill as we arrived from Seal River Lodge.
The VIA Rail train parked at Churchill Railway Station proves the train is up and running after several years out of action.
Glen, our Churchill guide, tells us of his relationship to the founders of the Seal River Lodge.
Churchill is a bustling little town, its declining industry overtaken by tourism. We saw that there were numerous hotels and lots of tour operators offering wildlife experiences (bears, whales and birds). Many visitors were seen walking around (the locals drive), enjoying the relatively mild conditions, about 0C. It has a population of 900 and is remote, being 400km north of the nearest bigger town, and 1000km north of Manitoba's capital Winnipeg. It is just south of the border with Canada's newest (1999), largest (1.9M sq.km) and northiest territory, Nunavut, dedicated by treaty to the Inuit people.
Classic milepost at the Lazy Bear Lodge in Churchill.
The Thule first arrived around Churchill around AD1000, and they later evolved to the Inuit. A Danish expedition in 1619 heralded the arrival of Europeans, and by 1717, the Hudson Bay Company had established a fur trading post Churchill River Post named after John Churchill, an ancestor of Winston Churchill, who was governor of the company in the late 1800's. The town hosted the US military during WW2, and a rocket launch facility from 1956-1984. To quote Wikipedia, "In the 1950s, the British government considered establishing a site near Churchill for testing their early nuclear weapons, before choosing Australia instead".
Glacier smoothed rocks line the Hudson Bay coast of Churchill.
There are no roads to Churchill, and the only ground-based access is via the Hudson Bay Railway. A washout (due to "unprecented flooding") broke the line in 2017 and funding disputes delayed its repair until December 2018. Occasional derailments continued, which foiled our Plan A to come to Churchill by train, and in the ensuing uncertainty we finally commmited to flying in and out. The loss of the railway caused the already struggling town great difficulty as it decimated tourism and spiked consumable prices.
Sadly, that's a real polar bear in the Lazy Bear Lodge gift shop.
It's taken some time for the town to be made safe from polar bears, a growing need as tourism increases. Bears which cause trouble are sentenced to maybe a month in a polar bear jail, more officially referred to as the polar bear holding facility. This is a rather attractive big steel shed near the airport, and visitors are no longer allowed inside because it acclimatises the bears to humans, something authorities are trying to avoid. In fact, bears in custody are watered but not fed in a strategy meant to punish the animals and discourage repeat offenders. Recidivists are appearently flown to near Seal River to try to make sure they don't come back.
Inuksuk on the Hudson Bay coast in Churchill.
Detail from mural 'Peace + Circumstance' on the side of Churchill's polar bear jail by Kal Barteski.
One of many bear traps lined up outside Churchill's Polar Bear Holding Facility.
We saw the outside of this jail during our tour, with the other most interesting features of Churchill being a spectacular inuksuk (Inuit for "sculpture representing a man") and an old fishing boat at the beach converted to a picnic area, and many really good murals installed on the side of old buildings, sponsored as a 2017 environmental project to promote ocean conservation.
'Power of Nature', by Arlin Graff, the bear being rendered with artifacts of 'what humans have destroyed in nature'.
Two stories here: aircraft 'Miss Piggy' which crashlanded in 1979, and mural 'A Small Northern Town and our Common Crisis Emergency Transmission' by Pat Perry about the perils of a town reliant on one industry.
Not sure of the provenance of this mural, but Glen said that it's based on an actual observed friendship between a bear and a wolf.
Our tour over, a takeaway lunch from the Lazy Bear Lodge inside us, our group returned to the airport for our Calm Air flight back to Winnipeg.
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