This post is part of a series on a trip we took to Canada in 2002 to see the annual polar bear migration through Churchill.
November 9, 2002
At 9 am on November 9, we arrived at our final destination: Churchill. Churchill is a normally a quiet little town on the shores of the Hudson Bay in Manitoba, with a population just under 1,000 people. Every year in late fall, polar bears migrate through the town and onto the bay, after waking up from hibernation. Every year, dopey tourists like us migrate up to Churchill to try to catch a glimpse of these magnificent bears, with somewhat mixed results.
After three days and two nights on the Via Rail Train, we finally emerged bleary-eyed at our final destination. We had to wrestle Alexander into his snowsuit to deboard the train, and he was not at all not happy about it. It was like trying to dress a baby alligator. He seemed to have the strength of ten toddlers all of a sudden, and used all his might to try to throw the snowsuit off and out of the window of the train.
We brought along enormous bags, all of which we had to try to wrangle off the train, along with the unhappy toddler, and catch up with our group at the train station. It was like walking into a cryogenic deep-freezer when we got off the train, but the day was clear and bright. A North Star School bus waited to take us on the first leg of the tour when we got off the train.
Our extremely perceptive tour guide, John, suggested that they drop off Alexander and me at the playground at the Town Center. The rest of the group went on to an Inuit museum and to see some of the town's sights, including the famous polar bear jail, where bears who stray to close to town are housed until the bay freezes over. Then, they are airlifted out to sea, with a tag and a stern warning not to come back. The townspeople used to shoot the bears who wandered into town, after a few mauling incidents, but given the state of the polar bear population, they opted to try for a peaceful co-existence instead.
I didn't get to see those things, but I didn't mind. I preferred hanging out with Alexander at the spacious indoor playground, where he was able to take off his snowsuit and run around. The Town Center was empty at this time of day, because most of the kids were in school. There was a kid-sized train that Alexander adored, and a set of three toddler-ready slides for him to slide down, forwards, backwards and upside-down. After trying out all the playground equipment, we ventured up to the Snack Bar.
Upstairs, by the Snack Bar, there was a big slide shaped like a giant woodland creature that looks meticulously handcrafted. Alex wanted to have a go at it, so I followed him up the long ladder and into the belly of the beast. It looked like he was sliding down into a whale-sized beaver's large intestine.
When we returned to the play area a little while later, children started to trickle in, and eventually the playground filled up with kids of various ages. A group of girls who looked about 8-10 years old made a game of sliding down the regular slide and seeing how far out onto the floor they could go beyond the end of the slide. I became their judge and place markers on the floor where they land.
The kids were all very nice to Alexander, who was considerably younger than most of them. Some of the girls adopted him as a little brother, and made a big fuss over him. Alexander was fearless and wanted to do everything they did, and they got a huge charge out of that. The kids were a mixture of native and caucasian kids, and they seemed to all know each other and get along well.
After about four hours in this place, I started to worry about Frank, Chris, Ruth, and Ralph and wondered if they have gotten eaten by bears. Or maybe they forgot about us. I had no earthly idea where the hotel is or how to get there, but I figured one of the kids would probably know. The town is not that big, so I figured we would make it to the hotel somehow.
Eventually, Frank wandered in and found us, and told me about the tour. They went to the Polar Bear Jail, stopped at the airport to pick up some people, and went to the town dump, where a couple of bears had been sighted earlier that day. They don't see any. I am secretly pleased by this news, because I would have been really ticked if they got to see a bear and I didn't. They ended up at the Eskimo Museum down the block, so Frank separated from the group to find us.
Alexander had been playing hard with all the kids, and was one happy little fellow. The kids started to leave, so we went to have a snack with Frank at the Snack Bar. When the bus arrived to pick us up to take us to the hotel, Alexander flatly and vehemently refused to put the dreaded snowsuit back on, so we just wrapped him in it and his blankets, and carried him onto the bus.
The bus drove a few blocks down the road to our hotel, the Iceberg Inn. The owner/maid/receptionist was there to greet us. He was a terribly nice man, a rugged-looking, skinny fellow who looked like he belonged there.
After checking into our room, we met up with Ruth, Ralph, and Chris in the lobby, and decided to go for a late lunch. We took a short walk next door to the restaurant at the Churchill Motel, where an exhausted Alexander promptly passed out in his plate of chicken nuggets.
After lunch, we set out down the wide, snowy street to go shopping. We wandered into a nice large gift shop with pottery, prints, and various souvenirs, and settle on a couple of Dorset prints at Northern Images and have them shipped home. Dorset prints are limited edition art prints made by native people in the Cape Dorset region. They tend to have abstract wild life themes and represent the native Inuit culture.
After the shopping trip, we wandered back to the motel and settled in. There are some kids from our tour group in the lobby, so we put on a Disney DVD we brought along, and all the kids watched the movie together. I decided to hang out with them, while the rest of the group goes out to explore the town a little bit more.
The sun starts to set, so Frank went out to take photos of sunset. I'm not that thrilled with the idea of going out near dark and was too paranoid about bears lurking around dark alleyways to stray too far. I popped out for a minute to take a picture, then went right back in, trying to avoid Alexander becoming an orphan on this trip. I waited in the room and worry that Frank is bear bait. Eventually, he returned, triumphant and freezing.
When the sun goes down in Churchill, it gets considerably colder, and we could hear the wind howling outside. We checked the tour guide and asked the desk clerk/motel owner for a recommendation for a place to eat. He recommended a place called Gypsy’s down the street. We took a taxi the 2 blocks to the restaurant so we don't a) freeze to death; and b) become polar bear entrees.
At dinner, we're seated at a long table with a bunch of other tourists, and we met a couple from San Jose, which is about 15 miles from where we live in California. And in the "it's a small, small world" category, it turns out they worked for IBM, and they visited Churchill every year at this time. They told us that the bears have pretty much left, they had only seen one mother and 2 cubs while out all day. This was disappointing news and didn't bode well for the trip.
Chris elected to stay with Alexander at the hotel, so Frank and I decided to brave the weather and the bears and walked back to the hotel in the dark. We stuck close to buildings, skulking around in the dark like the Von Trapp Family fleeing the Nazis, only we were trying to avoid bears. All the stores were closed, so I'm not sure where we would have run if we had actually encountered a bear. Luckily, the street was deserted, with no people or cars or bears, and we made the two block journey without incident.
