| Dianne has dreamed for decades of seeing
the polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, on the shores of Hudson Bay. Her dream is coming true – we’re going to Churchill! |
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Monday, November 6, 2017 We fly to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Despite how far north it feels to us,
Winnipeg is only 75 miles from the U.S. border and almost precisely in
the geographic center of North America. We arrive about 7 pm and are
shuttled to the historic Fort Garry Hotel. Giselle gets in shortly after
and we meet up in the hotel restaurant for dinner and exchanging
news. Cloudy and a forecasted high of -5 C (23 F). There’s snow on the ground from Winnipeg’s second snowfall of the year last weekend. We have arrived a day early, so we have a free day in Winnipeg. Giselle has friends who took this tour and highly recommended the zoo as a way of seeing up close animals we might later see from a distance. But we have not brought warm jackets or boots, because the tour company provides them, so after breakfast, we get the clothing issued early. The zoo will be a great opportunity to do a shakedown on the warm clothes.
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 Snowy owl -- so beautiful! We get to see them fed. Later, we were glad we saw them here, because they had migrated by the time we got to Churchill. |
 Arctic fox -- a very cute kit! He's eating frozen chicken. Mom is napping in the photo at the top of the page. |
 In an area called Journey to Churchill are polar bears and seals. (But not together, or there wouldn’t be any seals left!) |
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Most of the bears were orphaned near Churchill and would not have survived on their own, which makes us feel not quite so bad about their captivity. We watch polar bears while we eat lunch: a Canadian (Quebec?) specialty called poutine. It’s French fries topped with cheese curd and covered with a brown gravy. While at the zoo, we keep running into another group
wearing NatHab parkas and boots. They have just returned from Churchill,
where they saw about 3 dozen bears. Wow! We’re excited – it’s going to
be great! |
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| Shakedown results: Spending almost the
whole day outside is not a problem in those heavy parkas and boots.
However, face and nose are different story when the wind blows. Pulling
neck warmers up over the nose keeps the face warm, but causes another
problem: After a minute or two, exhalation fogs up glasses. Dianne’s not
wearing glasses, so she can leave her buff up longer. Then it gets wet.
Hmm . . . The right technique will take some practice. Tonight we walk a
few blocks to a fine Italian restaurant, despite temperatures in the
single digits (degrees F). |
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Wednesday, November 8 Today is the Extra Day in Winnipeg program. After breakfast we gather in the hotel lobby with others who will be in Churchill and board a bus with our tour guide. Terese is a Winnipeg native, loves her city, and gets us to love it also, even if the high for the day is -7 C (19 F) and, of course, the wind is still blowing. The tour starts with the Manitoba Legislative
Building. Built in 1920, it was recently discovered to be designed as a
Masonic temple, chock full of symbolic images, statues, carvings, motifs
and special numbers and numerical sequences. Fascinating! |
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From there, we head to the Manitoba museum. A docent gives us a
classroom presentation on Inuit culture, then a guided tour of history
and culture exhibits. We learn about the typical floor plan of an igloo
and how a woman’s garb is designed to allow her to shift baby from back
(for carrying) to front (for nursing) without the baby ever exposed to
the cold. Her pants have built-in pockets at the knees for carrying
diapers! We learn a lot about the Hudson Bay Company, the trading
company that helped explore and settle Canada and will celebrate its
350th birthday next year -- the oldest company in the world! |
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 Inuit woman's dress |
 Inuit snow shovel |
 The Nonsuch - full-size, sailing replica of the first Hudson Bay Company ship |
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| After lunch at a French restaurant, we spend the afternoon at the
Canadian Museum of Human Rights, the only museum in the world devoted to
human rights awareness and education. Our passionate tour guide,
originally from Mauritius, leads us floor by floor up the soaring
building (completed in 2012) which is architecturally symbolic of human
rights advancement. There isn’t time to do more than brush the surface
of the many exhibits: a timeline of 100 moments in human rights history,
booths telling individuals’ stories, displays about the Holocaust and
other mass atrocities, an interactive experience of legal issues, a
contemplation garden, and finally, after skipping two whole floors, the
glass top floor with a fabulous 360 view of Winnipeg. |
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This evening is the official beginning of the Churchill tour, with a welcome dinner for all the participants. Our tour is organized by Natural Habitats (nicknamed Nat Hab) and includes 29 people: a couple from Australia, a couple from South Africa, 4 Canadians, and the rest Americans. The tour guides are Eddy Savage, a young guy from British Columbia with a degree in adventure tourism (who knew there was such a major?), and Bonnie Chartier, a native of Churchill who helped start the tourism business there several decades ago. Eddy and Bonnie don’t get to eat much. They spend most of the time explaining what is about to happen and what to expect. "We want to be honest: We don’t know how many bears or even whether we’ll see any." It seems the weather is changing fast: the sea ice is freezing, which is what the bears are waiting for in order to head out and hunt for seals. Our only hope is that the winds might shift and blow the sea ice offshore. We head to bed with instructions for an early morning.
Luggage in the hallway by 6:15; assemble for the airport at 8:00. |
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Continue
the journey - day 1 in Churchill Return to Long Shadows Home Page |
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