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