Where Is Churchill?

Churchill, Manitoba, is on Hudson Bay at the mouth of the Churchill River, near the northern border of the province. It's known as "the polar bear capital of the world," because polar bears move through the area after the females have their cubs. They migrate back up into the Arctic as soon as the Bay freezes. Thousands of tourists go there in October and November to see them. Other people go in summer to see the belugas; it's also popular with birdwatchers.

Why Churchill in January?

I've loved the adventure of travel all my life, and the frozen far north has intrigued me for many years. Recently I discovered you can take the train up to Churchill, Manitoba, at a very reasonable cost, and finally I did it. The sight of a frozen salt sea, the hope of spectacular displays of northern lights, the stories of hardy folk who cope with severe winters, and the surprises of exploring an unfamiliar world all attracted me.

When you do something as counter-intuitive as going that far north in the winter, you find yourself free of crowds of tourists and enjoying the company and curiosity of the locals, many of whom are very interesting characters.

I drove to Winnipeg (roughly 8-9 hours from Minneapolis) and arrived on Saturday early afternoon, Jan. 18. I walked all over downtown Winnipeg, a very interesting and lively city of around 900,000, and visited the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature. The museum has life-scale dioramas depicting Cree Indian village life before Europeans brought the fur trade, a bison hunt, Boreal forest and prairie plant and animal scenes, city life around the turn of the 20th century, a full-scale replica of a small ship called the Nonsuch, and much more. It was so extensive and fascinating, I went back when I returned from Churchill. Their Web site is very good too: http://www.manitobamuseum.mb.ca/.

Saturday night I happened to stop in at a little tavern near the train station called the Blue Note and heard an excellent performance of bluegrass and country music by Stu Clayton, Canadian national yodeling champion, and his very talented daughter Laura.

On the way: VIA Rail Winnipeg-Churchill

(Click to see detailed map.)

The train leaves Union Station in Winnipeg on time 8:45 pm Sunday, January 19, with a mail car, two coach cars, a dining car and a sleeper car. We head south, immediately cross the Assiniboine River near its confluence with the Red River, and turn west. The engines' diesel exhaust wafts through the car for a while. Eventually I don't notice it anymore.

Full only yesterday, the moon illumines the snow-glazed landscape. The countryside looks much like North Dakota (flat and nearly treeless) as we angle northwest out of Portage la Prairie an hour into the trip. There are only four or five passengers in my car. I have four seats (one pair facing another) to myself. So far there's no more snow here than in Minneapolis, just a few inches. The stars are out.

About 11 pm I get thirsty and go in search of something to drink. After walking through the next car ahead, I run into a "no admittance - employees only" sign, so I go back and find the dining car directly behind my car. I buy a bottle of water and a can of beer and talk briefly to the conductor. Then I sit down in the smoking section of the dining car across the aisle from a 70-ish woman and have a very entertaining chat with her. Her name is Alice; she's from The Pas (pronounced "The Paw"). She tells me it'll be an interesting trip.

Sometime around midnight we come to a halt and sit for over two hours. I take advantage of the lull to get some sleep. Later I learn we were waiting for a southbound freight. The landscape beyond Portage la Prairie is starting to show more trees and the pancake flatness some gentle rolling. The trees make the train's horn sound hoarse. I sleep until close to 7 am, but wake along the way to notice low, coursing whaleback hills, like giant dunes. As we pull into Canora, Saskatchewan, there's a little more snow.

Signs of dawn appear around 8 am, and I look out to see long, high hills covered with poplar, tamarack and black spruce. (Clickity-clack, clickity-clack.) The sun rises between 8:30 and 9 am. (Clickity-clack, clickity-clack.) There is still some farmland, and many fields have scores of little huts in them. (Clickity-clack, clickity-clack.) I find Alice in the smoking section again; she says the huts are for bees. I speculate the bees are for buckwheat. We are 2-1/2 hours behind schedule, she says.

We reach The Pas at 11:30 am and I bid farewell to Alice. It's -13º F. The Pas, near the western border of Manitoba, is about even with the top of Lake Winnipeg. Here we start a northeasterly segment that will take roughly 15 hours to traverse. Thompson is about halfway. Then it will be another nine hours straight north to Churchill. Also we begin to run into the muskeg, which means the frost causes the tracks to heave. The train does a rhythmic rock and roll (clickity-clack, clickity-clack), and you walk up the aisle like a drunken sailor (clickity-clack, clickity-clack).

Thompson is reached by a spur from the main line which takes about an hour to cover. It is dark by the time we head up the spur. We stay only ½ hour, making up an hour's time. (On the way back it's daylight as we approach Thompson, and massive amounts of pulpwood are visible in long stacks and on flatcars on a siding.) In this region the railroad bed is uneven enough to keep the train speed to about 30 mph.

About 10:30 I notice the northern lights, which abruptly grow very dramatic. There's a young fellow from Sydney, Australia, in the other end of the car, so I go alert him. He is impressed; so am I. There's a good show for about an hour.

Extensive patches empty of trees appear. I didn't sleep very well last night, so I sack out more determined to get some good z's. I wake up near dawn, an hour or so before we pull into Churchill. Suddenly buildings appear. Out the left side I look: I see a snowplow engine. Is that Hudson Bay?! (No, it's the mouth of the Churchill River.) We pull into the train station just an hour behind schedule. I'm here!

Churchill

I stepped out of the train into intense cold; it was like those rare days in Minnesota in January thirty years ago when it would be 20 or 30 below zero. But the sun was shining. I stashed my bags behind the counter in the station and walked to the main drag, Kelsey Ave., to look for a hotel. It was cold like old times.

The first one was high-priced. The second one was more reasonable, and the fellow told me there were only three open in town. I checked the third and it was much higher. I decided to look around before getting a room.

(Much of this part of the story is best told by the photo gallery.)

I didn't take any pictures inside the Eskimo Museum, which has a wonderful hall full of arts and crafts of the Inuit. It is run by the local Catholic church. I was in there alone for an hour and a half, when the young woman attendant invited me in the back room for a cup of coffee. There I was introduced to three priests of various nationalities (one Belgian) and the bishop. The bishop?! Later I noticed my fly was down.

When I left the museum, I noticed the lost and found box was labeled "The Dispossessed." Those familiar with the works of Farley Mowat will appreciate the wit. Next I ducked into the nearby post office, bought a few postcards and sent them off. There I inquired about the temperature and was told that the windchill was minus 44 degrees Celsius, which is about minus 50 F.

The wind had been picking up during the day. When I walked outside into the wind, it was like a blowtorch of cold, causing my eyes to tear up and freeze shut. At this point I learned the weakness of my cold-weather gear. To camp in such conditions in the future I would definitely need headgear that can handle wind in the face at such temperatures.

So I was not able to take any of the longer walking tours I'd planned, such as out to see Cape Merry and the grain docks and the sled dogs on the edge of town. I'd seen about all I could within the walkable orbit of the train station. I went back to the station about 4:30 to find it closed until 7 p.m. I went into a nearby tavern, ordered a beer, and as I watched several people feed quarters into slot machines, reluctantly decided it made most sense to take the train back that night, rather than waiting two more days as planned. I was afraid I'd be reduced to spending most of my time inside the hotel, cafes and taverns if I stayed, given the weather.

Return to Winnipeg

On the return trip I met the manager of public works for Churchill, who told me how water was supplied to the town in winter and other entertaining facets of life in a town just over 500 miles from the Arctic Circle and 80 miles south of the Manitoba/Nunavut border. (Nunavut is a new Inuit-governed territory carved from the Northwest Territories and extending up into the deep Arctic.)

Another interesting person was Brigitte, a vivacious young northern nurse, who was riding from Churchill to The Pas. She has worked a lot on air ambulances flying medevac missions in the bush. I wish I could recount all the stories these autalkthonous friends told! They certainly enriched my experience with many hues and textures that I probably wouldn't have had if I had come up in polar bear-, bird- or beluga-watching season. I am also grateful to the VIA Rail conductor who answered all my questions in good humor on both legs of the journey!

Please e-mail me with your questions and comments!

Links

Web site on Churchill with travel tips that I found helpful:
http://www.creighton.edu/~hutchens/churchil.html

To see numerous high quality photos of Churchill (bears, bay, buildings...) go to:
http://www.arcticcircle.ca/churchill2000/index.htm

The weather in Churchill:
http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/scripts/citygen.pl?client=ECCDN_e&city=YYQ

An interesting short history of Churchill:
http://mail.churchillmb.net/~cnsc/ab-attrac-hist.html

The Canadian national rail system: VIA Rail:
http://www.viarail.ca/en.index.html

The above sites also have many links.