The Other Manitoba
by Tom Schmidt
It began while studying Canada's north in my grade 10 geography class. We talked about Churchill, Manitoba, and one of my students suggested a class trip. The cheapest way to get to Churchill is by bus to Thompson, and from there by train to the shores of Hudson Bay. After lengthy preparations, we boarded a bus one June morning. Our adventure in the accessible arctic had begun.
By the time we reached Grand Rapids, we were well into the Boreal Forest, the vast woodland that stretches to the treeline. In Thompson, we attended two mandatory tourist sites, a tour of INCO, the raison d'être for Thompson; and one of Manitoba's most spectacular waterfalls, Pisew Falls. Thompson is a company city carved out of the Canadian Shield. With its smelter smokestacks, fast-food franchises, and apartments, it seems out of place in the pristine wilderness.
Later, we boarded the "Polar Bear Express" to Churchill. The trip is about 480 km. but the train is only averages 40 km an hour due to track conditions and muskeg that results from the melting of permafrost during the summer months. Thus, it takes as long as fourteen hours. What do you see? Hundreds of kilometers of nothing. The train often stops in the middle of nowhere and people appear or disappear from the bush like apparitions. In fact, the most striking thing about this part of Manitoba is its lack of people. Life is rough and isolated here compared to the affluent south. We met many people headed home to remote communities along the line after shopping in Thompson, and we got a good sense of how isolated and alienated they really are. In Gillam, the thing to do for teenagers on a Friday night is to come down and hang around the train station, and then run through the train when it stops.
The people were open and friendly, and they exhibited frontier ruggedness. But many were poor, and there was evidence of alcohol abuse. We had our eyes opened to the realities of northern life.
Past Gillam, one enters the Land of Little Sticks, the treeline. Most imagine the treeline as a line in an atlas with trees on one side and tundra on the other. In fact, there are hundreds of kilometers of increasingly thin spruce and tamarack, before you reach the barren lands, which begin just past Churchill. The closer you get to Churchill the smaller the trees become, some only a few inches in diameter but hundreds of years old. All the branches grow on the south side of the tree because of the harsh north winds. There is water everywhere in this poorly drained lowland, and mosquitoes and blackflies rule.
The town of Churchill sits on the estuary of the Churchill River on the shores of Hudson Bay. The mixture of fresh and salt water creates a nutrient rich environment, which attracts fish, which in turn, attracts the thousands of Hudson Bay beluga whales during the summer months. As we rolled slowly into the train station, we could see what looked like whitecaps all over the river. The whitecaps turned out to be whales.
After some fine whale watching, we toured Churchill's many points of interest. The town is barren and rocky but filled with wonderful people such as our guide, Yankee Bill, an expatriate New Englander who has lived in Churchill for over eighteen years. Like any small town, Churchill has a close knit social fabric, and there are regular dances that the whole town attends. We learned that because of the winter wind, all students are bused to the complex, which contains the school, library, hospital, gym, movie theatre, swimming pool, and playground. It is a fantastic facility. I stood at the large windows overlooking the Bay and saw a small beach. On this beautiful, sunny June day it might have been Malibu except for the large icebergs in the distance.
Hudson Bay's size surprised us. The state of Texas could easily be placed within its boundaries. We forget that Manitoba has an ocean port. The tidal range is about fifteen feet, and we watched throughout the day as the tide went out leaving the small boats stranded on the riverbed.
Churchill has a long whaling and fur-trading history. It was important during the cold war as a military base. Today, it is a service centre for the north, including medical centre and transportation facilities such as the port of Churchill. It is a major tourist attraction for whale watching, the aurora borealis and of course, polar bears. Even in summer, we were warned to stick together as we dipped our feet in the ice-cold Hudson Bay. The spectacular rock formations along the shore harbour many migrating polar bears in the fall, but they can appear anytime.
Standing on the shore at Cape Merry overlooking Fort Prince of Wales, you can almost see Samuel Hearne or imagine the Nonesuch sailing into the Churchill River. With all these modern facilities, including homes and water lines above ground due to permafrost, it is hard to believe that people survived life in Churchill during the 1700's.
After a wonderful meal of Arctic Char, we boarded the Polar Bear Express for our return journey south. It had been a whirlwind trip that had vividly illustrated the sights, sounds and people of the north.