Reflections on Churchill

 Reflections on Churchill

Churchill Manitoba in the winter is truly the “deep north” and worth experiencing (at least for a few days). Its history is rooted in trade and transportation. People have lived in the Churchill area for thousands of years, starting with the Thule people about 3000 years ago with successive waves of population by the pre-Dorset and Dorset cultures, and then the Inuit about 300 years ago. South of Churchill the Dene and Cree also moved in.  The first Europeans (late 17th century) were trappers and whale hunters, and the Métis reflect a mixed heritage from that period. 

The Hudson Bay Company established a trading fort in 1720-40. While Hudson Bay is only clear for freight shipping from July to October, it was the only option until 1929 when the train line from Winnipeg was completed. After the fur petered out, the major industry was whale hunting.  Then in the mid-20th century, after whale hunting was banned, “whale cowboys” would trap belugas to ship to zoos and aquariums. The mid- 20th century also saw the creation and abandonment of the army base, a research rocket base, and a commercial grain port. Finally, in the 1980s, polar bear trips began the shift to ecotourism as the major income source for Churchill. In some ways the community has come full circle, returning to sustaining themselves based on the natural resources of the area (in this case through ecotourism).  

There is currently a debate about reopening the port for mineral shipments, as the warming of the NW passage is increasing the ice free shipping lanes; the effect this will have on the polar bears and beluga whales is the counter position. 

A word about the isolation of Churchill: there is no road access from Winnipeg. The train ride from Winnipeg takes two days, in part because the last 150 miles is over muskeg, relatively thin land above the permafrost and very prone to freeze-thaw heaving. That last 150 miles takes 12 hours  because the rail bed is so uneven.  Flying round trip from Winnipeg costs over $2000.  When we flew up on March 5th the cloud cover prevented much of a view, but on our return flight, clear skies enabled us to see how vast and flat the landscape is between Churchill and Winnipeg. In Churchill the highest bluff (formed by isostatic rebound) is 100 feet high. 

We spoke to a number of Chuchillians, some of whom grew up there and others who came for a visit and fell in love with the place. As our art instructor, Sandra Cook, said— in the winter there is a sense of accomplishment to do even the simple things (like going grocery shopping in -40F walking into the wind, as it’s too cold for your car to start anyway).  During the fall when polar bears are common sights in town, the rule is to leave your house and car unlocked at night in case someone needs a safe place to be. 

There is a huge town center (over 200,000 square feet) built by the army when the town had 4,000 residents, before the base closed. The town center includes all three schools, the hospital, the library, the town offices, basketball court, hockey and curling rinks, a swimming pool, gymnasium, art center, and movie theater. On Monday, when the windchill was -50 or lower, we heard children at the indoor playground. 

The town is very diverse, with a high proportion of First Nations but also people from all over Canada and the world. As a community they are working hard to overcome the lingering effects of the Residential Schools experience of previous generations. There is a deep appreciation of the nature and the stillness; many of the townspeople have cabins to “get away from the bustle” of an 800-person town! The brief Arctic summer is said to be beautiful with migratory birds, wildflowers on the tundra, and the bay full of beluga whales. 

For those of you who are curious about how one dresses to stand outside and watch the lights, a photo of Kevin is attached. He is wearing: thermal underwear, then a layer of shirt and pants, then a fleece, then a puffy jacket, insulated snow pants, a heavy long parka, a woolly hat, two pairs of socks and insulated boots. A buff or balaclava to cover the face and hand and foot warmers  finish the gear. 

Pictured: Kevin all suited up, downtown on a cold day, looking out on frozen Hudson Bay,  landscape view from the plane, sunset showing the snow drifts across the road 

More about auroras

 The aurora borealis is an amazing phenomenon to behold. The physics that causes it to happen (simply put, electrons from solar wind colliding with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere causing them to emit light) does not enter into the mind as you watch the shifting patterns of light dance across the sky. On a clear night, the contrast between the ribbons of color and the dark starry sky is striking. As you watch you appreciate the Inuit’s belief that the lights are their ancestors playing. If you whistle, you can get them to come closer, but do not whistle too loud or long because they may come down and take you up to join them. Though the eye does not always catch the subtle colors (our night vision is not overly color sensitive), the camera can capture a greater range of colors: green, reds, and blues. This allows us to share beautiful images.

On a cold cloudy day, ice crystals in the clouds cause refraction of the aurora causing the entire sky to appear green. The snow on the ground reflects the color causing it to take on a greenish tinge. Standing in the boreal forest immersed in this eerie green glow, you feel like you have been transported into a horror movie. Though, even on cloudy days, bright bands of aurora create interesting contrasting patterns against the green background sky.

Pictured: images showing the “green snow”, the red upper aurora bands, and moon rise 

Final day in Churchill

 Sunday March 8

We returned from last night’s outing about 1 am, and of course we lost an hour with daylight savings overnight, so it was a bit of a late breakfast this morning.  Late in the morning we went back to the dog sledding center (Wapusk) where we looked at the aurora on Friday night. 

David Daley is a 3rd generation Métis (First Nation people’s descended from European trappers and local people), and his wife is from the Cree nation. When Dave was growing up, snowmobiles were not yet common and dog sledding was essential transport in the winter. He spoke eloquently about his dogs, and what it takes to train and maintain a cohesive team. Most of his dogs are rescues, and he carefully matches the dogs to their best role in the team and to ensure the dogs like each other. He has raced in sixteen long distance ( over 400 mile)  races, including one from Churchill to Winnipeg ( 1200 km). He only runs the dogs for about 80 miles before giving them a rest of several hours, feeds them, and checks them for sore feet or ankles. The dogs wear booties to protect them.  He says he seldom wins the races because he won’t overtax his dogs (but they place high in the standings most of the time anyway). He said that if you push the dogs too hard, not only is it bad for them but sometimes they’ll just give up on you. 

It is largely to pay for the dogs’ food, as well as to share this traditional skill, that he takes tourists for dog sled rides. Dave had specially designed dog sleds for two tourists to ride with a musher in the back: one guest sits and the second stands with the musher behind them. The ride is about a mile and a half through the boreal forest. He calls the ride “I did a mile” like the Iditarod… the ride was fun, the dogs were beautiful, and to hear the musher gently communicate with her team was great. 

After lunch we heard from local poet (who also runs one of the hotels in town and works as a guide) about what drew her here from Saskatchewan and what she loves about this area. 

On and off over the past few days we have been following Willow Ptarmigan tracks around town, and this afternoon we finally got to see some. In winter, these birds are so fluffy and so camouflaged in white that they look like arctic hares until they move. Even their feet are covered (in this season) with fluffy white feathers. We found them hiding in a grove of scrubby willows (the buds are their main food source, hence their name).

We stopped for some pre-sunset pictures overlooking Hudson Bay on our way to town for dinner. Tonight we returned to the snow shoeing  location for our last round of aurora watching. The skies had been clear all afternoon, but clouded up again while we were at dinner. About 9 pm a stiff NW wind picked up, the sky cleared, the temperature plummeted.  We watched diffuse strands of aurora until well after midnight. At that point it was -15 with a windchill of -30. Although the aurora tracking systems predicted that the aurora would get stronger about 2 am, the temperature by then would have been -25 (-40 windchill) and we decided we had had enough. 

Pictured: trip mates dog sledding, sled dog, willow ptarmigan, pre-sunset, aurora

Creek Cabin

Saturday March 7

We awoke ( after a post-midnight return for the aurora viewing last night) to -15D and a windchill of -30. We spent the morning at the lodge. One of our trip leaders, Eddy, gave a talk about the aurora including myths about it. We then went into town for lunch. After lunch we admired some of the murals around town before heading out to the boreal forest to go snow-shoeing. The boreal forest has different plant and animals species than the tundra around our lodge. 

The original set of 18 murals were created during a 10-day festival in 2017. As it turned out, this was a very difficult time for the town of Churchill. The snowmelt from a major blizzard washed out the train line to Winnipeg. It took 18 months for the provincial government and the railway owner to agree on the funding for repairs. In the meanwhile the town was cut off: the only way to get supplies in was by ship, or plane which increased prices by 7-10x, and of course many things could not be sourced at all.

In the midst of this, the artists did their work, reflecting legends, natural beauty, and the harsh realities of the townspeople. Since then more murals have been added. They are a great source of color in the flat white landscape. 

Snow-shoeing in the forest was fun, including a stretch where Kevin broke the trail for the rest of us through knee deep snow. 

Tonight’s aurora viewing location was a cabin that sits on skis and is pulled out into the frozen Goose Creek. We needed to travel in a van with oversized snow treads to reach the cabin. We expected its isolation to enable extremely dark skies. The clouds filled in and the sky was actually quite bright from the reflected light off the snow. We could tell that the aurora was above the clouds, but the ice crystals in the cloud diffused their light into a vague pale green glow. 

To keep us amused while we waited for the skies to clear, Eddy “wrote words with a sparkler” with the cameras were set to long exposures. The little cabin provided a warming up spot (including hot chocolate with Baileys) and a bonfire outside added another visual focal point. The skies never did clear, which helped us to appreciate how great the previous nights viewing had been. 

Pictures: Polar bear mural (in the colors of the spring wildflowers on the tundra), deep snow shoeing trail, ice and rocks on frozen Hudson Bay, diffuse aurora, sparkler writing

Auroras

 Friday March 6

We had a leisurely morning (since the original plan had been for us to be up late last night watching lights ). It was another cloudy and unseasonably warm (about -5) day, after the overnight 3 inches of fresh powdery snow. We were pleased that an Arctic hare decided to take a nap right outside the lodge.

 After brunch in town, we spent time with a local artist, creating our own depictions of the aurora using pastels. She grew up in Churchill, moved away as a teenager, and returned in her thirties with an increased appreciation of the place. Her description of the aurora and its symbolism was moving. After our art class, we searched for a rumored arctic fox, but apparently it had moved on. 

The weather outlook was for clearing skies  (with increased wind) for the afternoon. Instead, the clouds thickened and a 30 mph NW wind blew last night’s snow into near whiteout conditions. Then just around sunset, the skies started to clear, although the wind did not abate. We quickly piled into the van to get to some sunset viewing spots before heading to dinner.

 We ate dinner in town and went straight to a sled dog property in the taiga forest to look for auroras. The trees protected us from the wind, and the aurora played across the sky for many hours. The full moon rising added another color feature.  For many of our companions, this was their first time seeing the aurora. There were oohs and ahhs and cheers and tears— and a LOT of photography. 

The pictures today are from our cell phones as the big cameras are still warming up from their 4 hours below zero. 

Pictured: the group’s artwork, our resident Arctic hare, sunset, a small selection of aurora photos

Churchill

Thursday March 5

We awoke to light snow and a stiff breeze in Winnipeg. After breakfast we boarded a charter for the two-hour flight  to Churchill. The conditions in Churchill this morning were -15 F with a windchill of -30. But the sun was warm and out of the wind it didn’t seem too bad. 

 Like Winnipeg, Churchill’s size and prosperity has shifted over the years based on changes to global trade. Winnipeg, for example, was planned as a massive railway hub, but once the Panama Canal was completed, a lot of freight diverted to that path rather than the cross-Canadian railway. This led to the growth of Vancouver and the stunting of Winnipeg’s growth. 

The civic infrastructure of Churchill was built anticipating a city of 4,000. A huge grain-exporting port was built in the 1930’s, and a joint US- Canadian military base was established after WWII. The base was closed in the 1970s and the port was closed in 2016. Ecotourism (polar bears in the fall, northern lights in the winter, belugas and wildflowers in the summer) has become the largest local industry, but the town’s permanent population hovers around 800. 

We visited the local Inuit art museum. The artifacts in the collection came largely by donation from Catholic priests and missionaries, who were often gifted the items during their work. The collection included carvings from soapstone, walrus ivory, antlers and whalebone. It was fascinating to see how porous and spongy the whalebone is; since whales do not come out on land, lighter bones help with buoyancy and swimming efficiency. 

We are staying at a small lodge outside town, to reduce the light pollution for photography. Tonight was our first outing, on the lodge grounds, to practice keeping warm and manipulating cameras in the cold and dark. It was windchill -10 when we started, not too bad… but the warmth brought with it a pretty steady snowfall. So no northern lights tonight, but a good practice with gear, and some interesting effects all the same. The cameras need to warm up overnight in a sealed bag, so some photos will come with the next day’s blog. 

Pictured: Kevin overlooking Hudson Bay (in the summer you sit here to watch belugas), the former grain elevator, a mural near the lodge, yours truly in front of the Inukshuk

Winnipeg day two

 Wednesday March 4

This morning’s plan was to visit the Art Museum, one wing of which holds a vast Inuit art collection. 

But first, we were curious about the building behind our hotel. It fills the rest of the city block and has ornate bas-relief decorations and neo-Grecian statuary on the exterior of the bottom four floors, while the 25 upper floors look to be three apartment building towers on top of the old. One of the apartment buildings has a revolving restaurant at the top. We walked the perimeter hoping for an historical marker, to no avail. So we went in, and found an elegant, gold-leaf ceilinged hallway. One of the offices was the city planning department— surely they would know the history of the building. They did not. But being Canadian, they were very helpful and took us to the landlord’s office in pursuit of information. At the landlord’s office, we met the HR director who knew at least a little of the history… it seems the building dates from about the same time as our hotel and was always a residential building. 

When we finally made it to the art gallery, we were very impressed with the extent of the Inuit art collection. The two-story foyer is dominated by a clear glass “visible vault”, arranged in columns and rows of artifacts. A kiosk allows you to look up the source of each artifact. Seeing the map of the Inuit communities across Canada was especially meaningful given our time in Nunavut last fall. 

There were two special exhibits: one by Omalluq, a female artist from Baffin Island, and the other a sculptor from the Northwest Territory, Abraham Anghik Ruben. Omalluq’s drawings reflected everyday life and the legends of the Shamans. The Ruben pieces depicted a mixture of Norse (Odin, Thor, Loki, etc) and Inuit legends. The pieces were beautiful, complex, and sometimes confusing! Most of the pieces are soapstone and quite large, some up to five feet tall. 

Our other activity for the day was to pick up our “gear” for Churchill. NatHab has parkas, snow pants, mittens, hats, sleeves and insulated snow boots for us to borrow. We will be quite the sight when fully garbed! 

We met the rest of our group for dinner; several are from Florida or California and the coldest they’ve ever been was walking in Winnipeg today— this will be interesting!

Pictured: outside and inside of Fort Garry Place, the glass elevator to the revolving restaurant, the visual vault, several Ruben pieces: Thor, Beowulf, Amergin’s Prayer (and ancient Irish legend), Sedna (the Inuit goddess of the sea).