CHURCHILL, MANITOBA
Unless you’re in the wheat or shipping business, the main reason for going to Churchill is to see the polar bears that pass through this area on their annual migration. Most visitors to Churchill stay for two or three days. ViaRail operates three weekly trains from Winnipeg, so the schedule is well suited to this. With one exception, everybody I met aboard the train was returning to Winnipeg on the Friday evening departure, three days from now. I was the lone exception, returning only twelve hours later on tonight’s departure at 8:45pm. Five days from now I’ve got to be in Prince Rupert, BC. After I get back to Winnipeg, I’ve got to fly back to Kelowna, then drive another 900 miles to Prince Rupert. More on that in a moment though…
For many visitors, a package tour seems to be the most popular way to see Churchill and the surrounding area. Most of the people on my train were either traveling with a tour group or planning to join one in Churchill. Prior to this trip, when I tried to google a bit of information about what to see and do in Churchill, I came up with mostly links to a bunch of these package tours, many of them costing well over $3000.00 USD per person. Apparently, there is no shortage of takers willing to pay that price.
With a population of only one thousand people, Churchill is not a big place. There’s one main street and five or six secondary streets. There are perhaps a half dozen hotels, with an equal number of restaurants and gift shops. The largest store in town is called the Northern. Although a sizable portion of the Northern is dedicated to groceries, the store also serves as a general store, selling everything from blankets to clothing to fishing line to toys to snow shovels. Prices were a bit higher than what you’d find down south, though not exorbitantly so.
Hotels on the other hand are very expensive. Most rooms averaged about $200.00 CAD per night. We’re not talkin’ Hyatts and Sheratons here either. A couple of brochures that I looked at showed rooms on par with what you’d find at a Holiday Inn or a Super 8. Functional and pleasant, perhaps, but worth $200.00?
It’s what the market will bear, and in a town that markets its bears for all they’re worth, you have to consider that the polar bear viewing season is only about six weeks long. These hotels aren’t there for the wheat and shipping people. They make most of their income for the year from the 15,000 or so tourists that visit from October through mid-November. During the summer months, a growing number of visitors are starting to recognize Churchill as an excellent place to pursue birding and whale watching as well, but the main tourist season is still tied to the polar bear migration.
So – with twelve hours ahead of me in Churchill, I set out to book a day tour on one of the Tundra Buggies that take people out to the coastal regions where the polar bears hang out. The tundra buggy is essentially a small bus body mounted on an elevated chassis high above four big wide tires. The tires are seriously big, too – about six feet tall – and well suited to getting around the uneven and occasionally boggy terrain of the tundra and coastal areas. The polar bears have been known to come right up to the buggy, get up on their hind legs and peer in the windows. Mmmm… if only I could pull one of those tasty looking people out for lunch…
I thought this sounded like a fine way to spend a few hours around Churchill and was prepared to pay up to $100.00 USD for it. I was so certain that a day trip would cost $100.00 or less that I didn’t even bother to verify the actual cost in advance. I was also so certain that this is what I’d be doing in Churchill that the original title of this trip report was to be
FROM FLORIDA TO ALASKA VIA PLANE, TRAIN, CAR, FERRY AND TUNDRA BUGGY
After making arrangements to store my pack behind the ticket counter at the train station, I started to make some inquiries. I found two different companies that offered tundra buggy tours and their prices for a day trip were the same. $250.00 per day trip. Did I hear that right? Did you say Two Hundred and Fifty Dollars? You did? Well uh, have a great trip!
Canadian currency notwithstanding, I’ve bought roundtrip tickets to Hawaii for less! I know people who’ve bought good running cars for less. In Alaska’s Denali National Park where I drive an eleven-hour 185-mile run out to Wonder Lake and back, the cost of the ticket is $32.00. The seven-hour Tundra Wilderness Tour, which includes a box lunch, hot and cold beverages and commentary from Certified Interpretive Guides costs $78.00. Over the course of both of these trips, we see grizzly bears, moose, Dall sheep, and caribou every day. Occasionally spotted are foxes, wolves, lynx, porcupines, martens and wolverines. Two summers ago,
ozstamps and
Joh rode out to Wonder Lake with me. We had a typically fine day in the park and didn’t even know of the FlyerTalk connection until we were chatting at the end of the trip.
Anyway, this might be a good time to point out that another one of the reasons I’m not staying three days in Churchill is because I can’t afford it. Even if I could, it’d be a hard sell. I remember traveling around the South Pacific back in the 1980s and stretching $3000.00 over four months. I had a great time on that trip, too. Granted, things are a little pricier today but the bottom line is there’s no way I’ll ever see the value of spending hundreds of dollars per day when, by my standards at least, I can have an excellent time for so much less. No doubt this means I’ll miss out on a few of life’s finer pleasures. So be it. I reckon I’ve been having a pretty good go at them so far on my comparatively meager budget.
So – no tundra buggy tour for me. I hadn’t even gotten out of the train station yet, so I returned to the brochure rack and found an outfit called North Star Tours that offered a six-hour historical and cultural tour around Churchill and vicinity for just $65.00. When does that tour depart? We can have a bus down to the train station in ten minutes. Sign me up, then! I’ll seeya out front.
I stepped outside to get a couple of photos of the train and engines, then headed back inside to check out the station. Churchill’s train station is an attractive two-story frame building that was built upon the arrival of the railroad in 1929. Over time, the station fell into disrepair and for awhile was said to be downright shoddy. In 2002, it was purchased and renovated by Parks Canada. They did an excellent job. The first floor is still used as a train station with a dedicated ticket office and waiting room. There’s also a small theater that Parks Canada uses to screen a documentary film about the history of the region. Upstairs houses the Parks Canada offices.
Right on time, a small airporter style bus bearing the green and yellow markings of North Star Tours pulled into the station lot. At the wheel was Koral, as friendly and capable a tour guide as you might ever imagine. Only one other passenger would be touring with us today and she was a retired Flight Attendant from Lufthansa named Inga. She still enjoyed pass privileges on Lufthansa and as one might expect had traveled extensively. Koral was from Saskatchewan but had worked with Northland Tours for six years. During the rest of the year she worked for another tour company out of Saskatoon that did much farther ranging tours. It was clear that Koral really enjoyed her work and it showed in her perpetual smile and a near encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly all things Churchill.
Rather than provide you with a blow by blow description of what we learned about Churchill’s history, I will instead provide you with a couple of links that should provide you with hours of entertainment!
CHURCHILL INFORMATION
CHURCHILL HISTORY
We were only about an hour into the tour when Koral’s radio crackled and she was alerted that a polar bear had been spotted out near the grain elevators at the far end of town. Let’s go check it out! There are no paved roads in Churchill and some of the “roads” we took I would hesitate to classify as such. Soon enough however, we arrived at a small bluff overlooking the willowy flats between the Churchill River and the tracks to the grain elevators. Parked nearby was a DNR (Department of Natural Resources) truck with “Polar Bear Patrol” emblazoned along the front doors. The bear was somewhere down amongst the willows but we weren’t able to see it just yet.
Some people think that Polar Bears just wander right through downtown Churchill during their migration. I suppose a few of them would if it suited them but the DNR goes to great efforts to insure that the bears don’t feel welcome in town. In the old days, people would just shoot the bears. Over time, a more temperate view evolved as society came to view its relationship with the bears in a different light. After all, these bears had been migrating through here long before any humans showed up. Rather than moving into their environment and just killing them when they became inconvenient to us, we could learn to live with them. Enlightened thinking, I know, but something still in short supply amongst more than a few people when it comes to animals in “their” backyard. Here’s some more enlightened thinking, albeit of an economic bent: There’s money to be made from them thar bears!
Koral explained that nowadays when polar bears appear in or near town, the Polar Bear Patrol officers will try to encourage the bear to leave by shooting noisy firecracker rounds in the vicinity of the animal. For many bears, this is sufficiently bothersome to give them cause to leave the area. No two bears are alike however and some bears require stronger persuasion. For these bears there are rubber bullets and/or bean bags fired from a 12-gauge shotgun. In the event that a bear fails to respond appropriately to these stronger warnings, it is then tranquilized and relocated to the Polar Bear Compound.
The Polar Bear Compound is located in a large quonset hut out by the airport. It is essentially a jail for recalcitrant bruins. Inside are twenty-eight holding pens. Once a bear goes into the jail, it is tagged, tattooed and held until the sea ice freezes sufficiently for it to be returned to its normal winter habitat. This involves re-tranquilizing the bear, loading it into a big net and flying it out onto the ice with a helicopter.
Interestingly, the bears are never fed during their stay in jail, even if they’re there for two or three weeks. During their migration, the bears normally eat very little if anything, so not being fed while in jail is in keeping with their normal situation. Koral pointed out that the DNR learned this fact the hard way some years ago. Back then the bears were fed in jail and the DNR found that they were arresting the same bears again and again. Apparently the prospect of tranquilizers and free meals was just too good to resist!
Meanwhile, back on the bluff we still hadn’t spotted our bear. Evidently the size of the willow thicket that the beast was “hiding” in made the use of firecracker rounds impractical. Then a DNR helicopter showed up and hovered over a particularly dense section of willow. Apparently polar bears don’t enjoy loud noisy helicopters hovering in their vicinity and our bear finally decided it was time to emerge from his thicket.
Koral, having seen a few of these events over the years, offered color commentary. The idea here, she said, was to encourage the bear to head back across the Churchill River, away from town. Inga and I got a good view of our bear as it moved out of the bushes and loped up a shallow draw and into another willow thicket. It was only about 120 yards away. The helicopter followed. This time however, the bear decided to hold its ground. By now another tour van had parked next to us to watch the proceedings. None of us could see the bear but the helicopter remained hovering about fifteen feet overhead for almost fifteen minutes. Then it set down nearby and two DNR trucks moved in. Evidently, the bear had been darted from the helicopter, which then remained overhead until the drug took effect.
We all hung out and watched from the bluff as the bear was loaded into the back of a DNR truck and taken off to jail. Because of the bushes we couldn’t see very well, but there were quite a few people down there as I imagine it’s not an easy chore to maneuver a big sleepy polar bear into the back of a truck. The average weight of a male polar bear in the Churchill region is 1000 to 1300 pounds!
It’s worth noting here that the general public is not allowed to go see the bears in the compound. The idea is to keep the bears as free from human input as possible.
Later, we stopped for lunch at a great little place called Gypsy’s Bakery. There was a fair crowd of locals there, many of whom waved hello to Koral. A big glass display counter housed all sorts of delicious looking cakes, pies and pastries. Also on the menu were hot and cold sandwiches along with today’s special, the roast beef plate. We all ate well and then resumed our tour.
Following a visit to the old Anglican Church, we headed out to the coast. Numerous signs were posted around coastal areas warning people of the danger of encountering a polar bear. The bears spend their summers in a state of “walking hibernation” during which time they hardly eat a thing and spend most of their time just lying around on the tundra. Every picture I’ve ever seen of polar bears has always shown them frolicking about in a white, arctic environment. It was weird seeing pictures of these huge yellowish-white bears lying amidst green grasses and willows during the summer months. Only two local people have been killed by Polar Bears over the past thirty years – a surprisingly low number.
Koral showed us an old docking site from the Hudson Bay Company that was quite a ways above the shoreline. The rise in land was due to what’s called the "isostatic rebound" which happens when land that’s been pressed down by the immense weight of glacial ice begins to “rebound” once the ice above it retreats.
Next we stopped at Cape Merry, across the Churchill River from the two hundred and thirty year old Prince of Wales Fort. The fort took forty years to build and had thirteen-foot thick walls. From some of the pictures I saw, the walls were much thicker in some places. In any event, I found it ironic that the fort was designed to be impregnable and yet was taken over by the French in 1782 without a single shot being fired.
Later, Koral dropped Inga off at her hotel and me at the Eskimo Museum. She really did an excellent job and if North Star’s other tour guides are anywhere near as good as Koral, then I highly recommend taking the time to do this tour if you want to learn more about Churchill than just its bears.
I spent about an hour in the
Eskimo Museum – a very worthy destination for any visitor to Churchill. The highlight of the museum is a huge collection of Inuit paintings and carvings, but there are also some interesting prehistoric archaeological artifacts along with a variety of pelts and a massive head from a 3000-pound walrus.
Next door to the museum is the post office. There I bought some stamps and then headed back out to the main drag to buy some postcards. Wow! Postcards are expensive up here! $1.00 – 1.25 for a basic card in most of the gift shops. I hit four or five of them before I came across some postcards of a polar bear removing a bottle of Labatt’s from a case of beer. They were only 45 cents each and as an added bonus, I got to hear all about the store owner’s hip transplant surgery.
The sun sets early this far north and with darkness fast approaching, I decided to head back to Gypsy’s to sample some of their pastry and dash off a few postcards. Anyone who’s ever received on of
my postcards knows that they can take awhile to produce. I write fairly small and to compensate for that, I add some of my own artwork along with commercial stickers and large colorful stamps. The idea here is to take up a bunch of space so I don’t have to write as much. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say but rather that it takes longer to have to write it all out. The irony of this all is that it probably takes me longer to add all the artwork than it would just to fill in the extra space with writing. Still, a standard has been set and some folks have started rather impressive collections of my cards over the years.
At 8:00pm, I headed back to the station, posted my cards, picked up my backpack and climbed aboard the southbound Hudson Bay for the long journey back down to Winnipeg. Even though I didn’t get to see a polar bear close up, I feel like I had a pretty nice day here in Churchill. I may even come back someday, especially if I can find a coupon good for a discount on those Tundra Buggy tours!
November 8, 2005
Churchill to Winnipeg
ViaRail Canada Comfort Class
“The Hudson Bay” Car 121
830p-805a +2 Travel Time: 37 Hours
Nothing particularly noteworthy happened on the way back that I didn’t already write about on the way up. I guess I should note here that the
Hudson Bay is notorious for its late arrivals in Winnipeg. It’s usually late by two to four hours. This is due to the poor quality of the track south of Thompson. Unfortunately, the delays are often exacerbated by the fact that once the passenger train is running late, it must give way to freight trains whether they’re on time or not. After all, freight is and always has been where the real money’s at.
I met a couple backpackers from England who had a flight booked from Winnipeg to Toronto at 11:00am, only three hours after we were due to arrive Winnipeg. From Toronto, they had a connection back to London. After hearing all the stories of this train’s perpetual state of delay, they decided to detrain at Thompson and take a bus from there. The bus arrived Winnipeg twelve hours before the train, though to be fair the bus also took a much more direct route as opposed to the train which zagged over to The Pas by the Saskatchewan border.
As things turned out, we arrived in Winnipeg on a bright sunny morning at 10:00 am, just two hours late. I had plenty of time to stop for a coffee downtown before hopping the city bus back out to the airport.
November 10, 2005
Winnipeg to Calgary WESTJET 737-700 Coach Class 115p – 220p
Calgary to Kelowna WESTJET 737-700 Coach Class 435p – 435p
Winnipeg International is a small to medium sized airport. It is served by all the usual suspects along with a host of smaller, regional airlines. A fair sized cargo operation was also in evidence at one end of the field.
There was no line at the WestJet ticket counter, and three pretty agents stood on duty there, eager to check me in. Once again, I scored exit row seats. On the down side, I was informed that my flight to Calgary would be operating about an hour late. On a more positive note, my connection to Kelowna wouldn’t be affected since I’d been scheduled for a two-hour layover in Calgary anyway.
So, I now had two and a half hours to burn at Winnipeg International. What to do? I wasn’t particularly hungry and had no reason to visit any of the airport stores. Then I saw a sign for the
Palliser Lounge. This lounge was operated totally independent of the airlines and required only a $15.00 fee to enter. It was located airside, so I passed through security (where my T-shirt caused quite a laugh) and headed there straightaway.
The receptionist took note of my boarding pass and said she’d notify me when my flight was ready to board. She then led me on a brief tour of the facilities. As airport lounges go, the Palliser Lounge was just fine. A large console TV was located at one side of the lounge and a service center offered a nice variety of complimentary non-alcoholic beverages. Also available were some nice looking muffins along with the all the usual stuff like chips and pretzels found at most lounges. There were only two true workstations, both of which were equipped with Internet capable computer terminals that took up most of the available table space. Another small room offered comfortable couches and a couple of tables, one of which I commandeered for my laptop to take advantage of the free wireless Internet access. In all, a steal at only $15.00 CAD per visit. By comparison, American wants $50.00 for a day pass to one of its vaunted Admirals Clubs.
I was hopeful that one of my WestJet flights today might be aboard a 737-600. This is the only variant of the 737 that I have not yet flown upon, and very few airlines actually operate this smallest version of the Next Generation 737s. WestJet is the only operator in North America, while in Europe only SAS flies it. A couple of Chinese domestic airlines and Tunis Air round out the field. Unless the –600 offers substantially better operating costs, I can’t imagine why most airlines would buy it when they can employ the greater versatility of a 737-700 or –800 for not that much more money.
In any event, both of my flights today were aboard winglet equipped 737-700s. This is a good looking plane in WestJet’s two-tone blue and turquoise livery, and the cabin interior is equally attractive with its 136 dark gray leather seats atop navy blue carpet. Interestingly, the single exit row only offers extra legroom on the ABC side. The DEF side is standard seating with the exception that there’s no seat in front of exit window seat 12F. If the idea behind more space at the exit row is to facilitate quick and easy access to the over wing exit, this seems a very odd arrangement indeed. Looking down to the floor, I didn’t see anything about seats 12D and E to suggest that they could be easily removed either. Hmm… Anyway, a little heads up there for anyone desirous of extra legroom on WestJet’s 737-700s.
In Calgary, I spent my one-hour layover entirely within the WestJet concourse. Once upon a time, my Priority Pass membership would grant me entry to all of Air Canada’s Maple Leaf lounges, but Air Canada dropped out of the program this year so in Calgary at least I had nowhere to go. Years ago, while flying First Class on Royal Air Maroc out of Montreal’s Mirabel Airport, I was granted access to a Maple Leaf Lounge and found it quite nice indeed. Hopefully they’ll someday rejoin the Priority Pass program.
The last time I flew out of Calgary, I was aboard an Air Canada DC-8-61. That should give some of you an indication of just how long it’s been since I’ve been in this airport. Back then, the terminal was your classic 1970s style airport terminal – basic and functional, though hardly memorable. Judging from the WestJet concourse and from what I could see of the Air Canada wing, Calgary’s airport has undergone substantial change for the better.
A large Starbucks Coffee kiosk dominated the central service area of the concourse, so I headed over there for a tall Verona and a turkey sandwich to enjoy later on my flight into Kelowna. We had a full load for the short 50 minute flight across the Rockies and I took some pictures of the sun on the clouds as we climbed out of Calgary. We landed in Kelowna right on time at 4:35pm and I was surprised to see that it was dark already. There’s still another six weeks until the winter solstice, but then Kelowna is over on the eastern side of the Pacific Time Zone…
As for WestJet, I think they offer an excellent product and good value for the money spent. Certainly, a television equipped seat aboard a big wide WestJet 737 is far preferable to being crammed into one of those dinky CRJ-200s that Air Canada Jazz operate on many competing routes. As it says on the bulkhead at the front of the cabin, Way To Go, WestJet!