I just realized that not everyone may have an idea what Churchill is, so here is an explanation, at least physically.
Churchill is a collection of houses, stores and hotels built from other houses, stores, shacks, ATCO trailers, bowling alleys and whatever else happened to be lying around at the time. Do not be surprised to find one of Churchill’s original tar-paper shacks lying at the heart of one of Churchill’s newer looking houses. This is not unique to Churchill, of course, it can be found all across the north. We may not seem ecofriendly but we can really recycle a building.
The rest of Churchill, actually the most of Churchill but who’s counting, is comprised of Manitoba Public Housing units. These are ‘California-style’ beach houses that were likely never intended for the arctic winters of Churchill, not to mention a good number of the windows were installed upside-down and a fair bit of insulation was ‘forgotten’ when they were built.
They were built in the early 1970s as a response to the military withdrawal from Churchill – there were a bunch of government promises of development to make up for the closing military base and removal of personnel. Most of them didn’t materialize with the exception of enough public housing for 3500 people in a town that has always really hovered around 1000. Strangely enough, its always really tough to get an apartment here… weird.
On the bright side, a few years back all the public housing units started getting retrofitted – beginning with the ones most visible to tourists first (insert eye roll). So now instead of chipped brown and yellow paint, most are blue, red and non-intrusive yellow (at least for now). Looks pretty good all told.
And the final link in this motley collection is the Town Centre Complex, which is exactly what it sounds like. It is the town offices, school, library, skating rink, hospital, curling rink, gymnasium, daycare, cafeteria, movie theatre and I think that’s it. Oh there is a giant polar bear slide too.
The complex part comes in with who exactly pays for the costs of running the building. Again, it was designed as ‘compensation’ for the military withdrawal but it was also designed based on two dollars a barrel for oil. As oil skyrocketed to four dollars, the Town Complex’s budget was already out of whack. With most things in Churchill, government scattered a la Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote. It is a weird phenomena, as long as there are announcements about saving polar bears or touring VIPs across Canada, the Feds, the Province and everyone else are readily available, Simple words such as sewage infrastructure, operating agreement or garbage dump tend to have the opposite effect.
Now, add to all of this a plethora of random community symbols, statues and picnic areas. There are two competing factions for town symbols in Churchill – one is the Churchill Ladies Club and the other is Edgar, the town – well I am not sure what he is anymore – but he was the guy with the loader for several years. Mainly through these two entities (although not solely), the town also has relocated trees, rocks and boats, more picnic shelters and inukshuks than you can shake a stick at, a bigger boat (The Enterprise) on the beach, a medecine wheel, three Thompson wolf statues, a polar bear statue, plaques for Thandadelthur, the Sons of Martha and the Heritage Train Station, more sitting areas (most of which are conveniently located right beside ‘Polar Bear Alert Do Not Walk Here’ signs), three Welcome to Churchill signs that I know of, a Churchill scenic route sign (that is closed for 80% of bear season and now ends at the garbage dump), a boardwalk, a sidewalk, a centennial cement maple leaf, a few cairns and a ‘weather rock’ that explains the joke just a little too much.
Finally, we don’t have a MacDonalds or Wal-Mart but we do have one four-way stop and an overpass that actually doesn’t lead anywhere anymore. And that’s Churchill.
