--- KNUT FREE ZONE ---

Explore Polar Bear Alley - polar bear blog, polar bear tours, polar bear info and polar bear pictures. Plus some good Churchill news and gossip, travel advice, links and a psychic husky.

The truth and gossip about Churchill's polar bears. Biology of western Hudson Bay bears, climate change stuff and polar bear photo gallery. Includes our famous Polar Bear Attack page!

Tourist's guide to Churchill, Manitoba, Canada includes hotels, tours, trip planning and some survival tips.

Churchill's monthly newspaper published occasionally. Churchill news, history, wildlife, poems and the ever popular BayLine Girl.

--- KNUT FREE ZONE ---

No Knuts is good Knuts...

If you like the Polar Bear Blog, check out my first book, Polar Bears of Churchill. It combines eight years of guiding experience in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada with the latest scientific research, local history and a bit of cabin fever. Independently published. Available online for $14.95! Click BUY NOW to purchase a copy and support Polar Bear Alley!

Churchill on Hudson Bay is a mix of Churchill history and stories from the trapline. Written by longtime Churchill residents, Angus and Bernice MacIver, it is the best resource about Churchill, Manitoba available. Published by the Churchill Ladies Club. Available for $16.95

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Polar Bear Alley

This is a collection of northern stories - polar bear, arctic and otherwise from Churchill, Manitoba, Canada - the polar
bear capital of the world.

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Polar Bear Alley

Polar Bear Alley is a real place but not this place. It is a strip of white sand beach along the coast of Hudson Bay near the former site of the Churchill garbage dump. A beautiful place for a picnic if you know how to handle a shotgun.

This version of Polar Bear Alley is created by Kelsey Eliasson in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada - specifically at Camp Nanuq -a 'cottage suburb' twenty kilometres (15 miles) east of Churchill. I run a tour company called Polar Bear Alley Expeditions and write a few books, including the Polar Bears of Churchill guidebook, when not chasing polar bears off my porch.

January 31, 2008 - Winter Living Tours

No word from Tundra Buggy so its lookin' like I don't have any buggy days for next bear season and without buggy days no tour either. Such is life, I didn't really have a whole lot of hope anyways but you have to give a shot when you can.

On the bright side, the blizzard is over and the colours were lush on the drive home, sucking in the cold air and breathing out oranges, pinks and blues. A nice sunset and some early evening northern lights too.

So, of course, I dragged the road - this really is my new hobby now, me vs. winter - and for those of you who are confused - dragging the road is pulling a giant steel bar and chain behind the truck to remove or compact snow on my winter road. Anyways, as always, I did what I had to and then couldn't stop until the truck was mired in a snowdrift.

Now, I don't even really get angry when I get stuck anymore and I'm pretty good at getting out - which incidentally gets easier the less 'raging' you are. So, while I was shovelling, I thought of a great idea... Winter Living Tours. It could be a five day tour where Day One we drive a truck into a snowdrift and dig it out then drive around on the ice lake, Day Two we split firewood - in the kitchen because its too cold outside, Day Three could be shovelling the deck in a snowstorm - two participants would be on the roof throwing buckets of snow on the person trying to shovel the deck, Day Four would be sitting on the couch rocking back and forth mumbling to yourself... Day Five would, naturally, be the Meat Draw at the Royal Canadian Legion!

January 30, 2008 - Still Goin Strong

Well, this would be Day Two of a good Churchill blizzard. Last night, I spent about half an hour trying to get out of my house and then another three hours shovelling what used to be my deck but had since evolved into a 4' snowdrift (unfortunately, I am not taking dramatic license with the situation). It was a momentous occasion when I actually had to step over the railing to get back onto the deck. Once that was conquered, I dragged the road to try and keep it 'treading water' in the blizzard, its doing okay but today is, of course, another day.

So, I am just having a coffee delaying this morning's round of snow shovelling. I can still push the door open but there's a good 2' of snow blown in on most of the deck and the giant drift has pretty much returned to its former glory. It seems that the wind is at just the right angle and just strong enough to bounce snow off the willows (its always the willows...) in my front yard and deflect it in a big 'J' towards my door. That combined with the buckets of snow coming over the roof and around the east corner of the cabin make a pretty formidable combination.

Luckily, this blizzard is supposed to let up tonight only to be replaced by -56 windchill, maybe this is going to be an 'oldtime' Churchill winter. If that's the case, anyone living in the north and is not actively campaigning for global warming is crazy.

January 29, 2008 - White Out, Snowed In

Back in the void, the trees across the lake have disappeared and even Milo has given up going in and out the door. I think he keeps thinking the other two dogs will come outside with him and they're not too keen on that, so he goes out, waits about five minutes, scratches at the window and I get up and answer the door. A door which took about ten minutes to open this morning - this house is perfectly situated for ambient solar heat but also for ambient drifting snow. I think every year around this time, I make a note to build a 'mudroom' and then forget about it by May...

Filled up the water tank yesterday so we are back in the lap of luxury here, hard to believe how many years we went without running water. Of course, no shower yet but I'm working on that one, even if progress is a little slow.

Not to mention, I paid the final loan payment on the cabin yesterday! No forty year mortgage here... I'm a home owner! Now I just need some land... and a 4x4 van...

January 28, 2008 - The Cabin

Waiting for the next winter storm and enjoying the one nice day between -30 somethings.

January 27, 2008 - Winnipeg River Walk Longest in the World

So, it sounds like it is official now that Winnipeg, Manitoba has the longest skating rink in the world, coming in at about 8-1/2 kilometres. It stretches out along the Assiniboine to Omand's Creek and on the Red River between Fort Gibraltar and the Norwood Dock. These rivers meet up at a couple skating rinks by the Forks Market, near downtown 'Peg City. Sounds like Forks management is bringing Guinness World Record folks down to make things official.

My friend Dave, from Northern Soul, took the 'Fork's river walk' contract this year and despite putting a couple vehicles through the ice and a lot of long days over Christmas seems to have pulled it off. I was lucky enough to help him out for an evening before I came back north and I've got to say it was pretty fun cruising down the river with an ATV complete with snow blade and a zamboni.

The Winnipeg river trail will be officially opened on Monday morning.

January 26, 2008 - Gray Jays on Schedule

Around 9:45am, everyday that isn't a blizzard day, the gray jays stop by my place, looking to scavenge dog food, twigs, seeds or whatever they can get. These two, a breeding and territorial pair, are probably living across the lake at Spruce Ridge (or at least, Spruce Ridge is on their list of 'stops' just before Camp Nanuq).

They build their nests a couple meters, maybe five or six feet off the ground around here, mostly out of sticks, feathers, hair and rotten wood (used for insulation). Most of their nest building (and upkeep) takes place in the spring, usually March. Right now, these jays are simply weaving and bobbing around searching for and then stashing food. They can have hundreds of little caches throughout the winter, using the cold temperatures to keep the food from going bad. Gray jays fix their food in place by essentially sticking it to or in a tree, etc with spit. An early spring can be especially tricky for gray jays since much of the food cached for nesting time can spoil in warm temperatures.

January 24, 2008 - One More For (or Against) the Road

At 1:18pm, another blizzard started in Churchill. You could tell it was on its way, it just arrived a little more abruptly than anticipated. The wind had flipped over to the south this morning and temperatures were veritably balmy at -12C. Gray jays were flitting about, grabbing food and maybe fortifying their nests before the next dose of winter. A few flakes have been drifting around all morning.

In the matter of the past few minutes, we have gone from fluffy snowflakes to near zero visibility - I can still see my trees across the lake but just barely. Sitting at my computer and looking up and out the windows, it seems like we are back in the void, and, not just the virtual void that perpetually cradles Churchill in her paradisical arms, but the void void. Time to fire up the lava lamp, have another coffee and see if my winter road can tough it out through this latest edition of winter.

January 23, 2008 - Cold Snap Havoc

So, it sounds like chaos up in Nunavut, moreso than usual. The recent and extended cold snap and wind and blizzardish conditions have ground things to a halt in the Kivalliq, the region north of Churchill, including Arviat, Rankin Inlet and Baker Lake. Cargo is just starting to move out of Churchill today and the radio has running stories about the stores running out of food up there. Pretty crazy stuff.

This, of course, brings me to the question 'why is climate change bad for the arctic?' and I am not too sure I have an answer anymore, especially with these storms shutting down supply lines.

These recent temperatures have been more along the lines of what long-time residents and elders remember and its really not that fun. Today was the first day I really enjoyed being outside cutting wood, snowmobiling and just puttering around the yard - mostly looking at things and planning... Not to mention, my woodstove is actually winning the battle with the cold today so it MUST be warming up. Windchill around minus thirty is fine, around minus forty is not.

Speaking of windchill, the Hudson Bay Quest dog sled race is set for March 29th, leaving Churchill for the 200 mile run along the coast to Arviat. There's been a lot of interest in the race this year so let's hope its not still -50C by the time it comes around. Check out the Hudson Bay Quest website.

January 22, 2008 - The Good Old Bears

Last December, the oldest polar bear fossil on record was found in Norway. It dates back more than 100,000 years, possibly 130,000. It proves that polar bears, at least in some form, survived through at least one interglacial period, the Eemian, which incidentally was warmer than the Holocene, which is where we are today.

This discovery hints that the polar bear may be an older species than previously believed. Today, it is commonly held that polar bears evolved from brown bears about 100,000-200,000 years ago. Now, with proof that the polar bear was already a genetically distinct species over 100,000 years ago placed this well-entrenched fact in doubt. That's what I like about polar bears - they have a way of proving us wrong.

"This is just how I interpret it. But this is science - when you have little data, you have lots of freedom." I like that line...

Here is the article, Ancient Polar Bear Jawbone Found

January 22, 2008 - Churchill Has Crabs

Churchill can now add 'Crab Capital of the World' to our long list of 'Capital Of the World' signage, likely posted near the entrance of the Seaport bar. Come to think of it, it may be time for Churchill to put in a claim as the 'Captial Of the World' Capital of the World. THAT would be something to write home about.

Anyway, Graham Young of the Manitoba Museum just published findings that Churchill, Manitoba is home to the oldest horseshoe crabs on record, about 445 million years old. Churchill is also home to cephalopods, brachiopods, corals and a whole bunch of trilobytes, including the world's largest.

Almost every year, Young and a strange little group of fossil hunters come up and wander the tidal flats of Hudson Bay, eyes cast on the limestone rocks searching for fossils, old and older. To me, it seems like kind of a miracle that they haven't been eaten by a polar bear.

Incidentally, today's horseshoe crabs are really not that much more evolved than their ancestors, a trait that I may increasingly have in common with them, if I don't get out of this cabin soon. Over the past few days, I have read and annotated all 500 pages of the North of 58 Churchill book, not to mention the Churchill archives dating from 1931 to 1974.

Its still cold enough today to keep me writing but a nice morning nonetheless with the mostly full moon still hanging in the western sky (sort of south) and the sun rising in the east (sort of south, too).

January 21, 2008 - Deep Freeze

Its been about a week of hibernation now, hiding out and writing during the deep freeze- finally completeing 'Only In Churchill' and 'Polar Bear Alley' books. Winds have died down and my internet is a little less erratic, still it looks like it is going to hit -53C windchill tonite, ambient temperatures right now are in the mid minus thirties and you don't need much wind for windchill in this kind of cold. Still and all, great weather for splitting wood... as long as your back is to the wind.

The winter road has held up surprisingly well during this week for north winds, of course, the trail to access our water tank is blown in, so not really sure how we will refill that - funny, how spoiled you get turning a tap and having water come out, and equally funny, how quickly the dishes pile up once that is gone.

Already had a a few minor freeze-ups, the kitchen drain froze so I climbed under the house with a Herman Nelson - now called a 'Tundra Toaster'. Anyways, it is a little contraption that hooks up to a propane tank and shoots flame out of a funnel until you click on the fan and the flames become 'heat' and the 'heat' soon becomes thawed pipes.

Now, I am installing 'heat tape' on the piping underneath the house. Heat tape is pretty common in Churchill and the north, pretty much an extension cord that gives off heat. You fix it to your pipes and plug it in, voila, no frozen pipes. Fun and games in the arctic.

January 17, 2008 - Lots of Endangered Polar Bears

They are predicting -50C windchill so today is as good a day as any to wade into polar bear politics. In the Polar Bear Blog, I have more than a few entries about the growing gap between Polar Bear Research and local knowledge and observations. A friend of mine, who spent several years in Arviat, Nunavut, just emailed me a paper that she has had published called 'More Bears, Less Bears'. It examines the view of Inuit residents of Arviat and how it is that they believe that the western Hudson Bay polar bear population is growing not in blatant freefall.

It talks about the importance of the hunt, both traditional and manufactured (in a strange way, by the creation hunting quotas and regulations). The paper covers issues from the sport hunt, the lottery, women's right to hunt and polar bear conservation in the north. It even underscores the concerns that I have heard from many Churchill residents that our Manitoba Conservation's 'bear lifts' (helicopter relocation program) simply moves polar bears closer to Arviat and most of these bears are consequently killed when hunting season opens on November 1st. The views expressed are not often heard in today's scientific world.

For anyone, wishing to truly understand the effects of the pending U.S. ruling on Polar Bear's endangered status and how it will not reduce the amount of bears harvested only the money that comes into northern Canadian communities. (I would like to believe that an Endangered ruling will slow down oil and gas development in the north, but... here's a good article about new oil drilling in Alaska and another one from ScienceDaily.com)

January 15, 2008 - Slow Sunrise

The clouds are hanging low today, huddled above the treeline, pinning and squashing the sunrise, making it appear as a giant yellow eye slowly blinking awake, sleeping in until after nine, living on the couch and on the dole in the cold. Its gaze spreads purple and yellow across my lake, plodding towards the cabin to light up first my willows then my firewood and eventually sneaking inside the house to brighten my scattered papers and coffee cup.

The wind is still from the south but you can only have so much south wind before the sea ice itself wakes up and blows back. The radio says we should have a good northwest gale by tonite and -45C windchill. Good writing weather indeed.

January 14, 2008 - Light Northern Lights

The lights are faint tonight but out there, a few green splashes to the northeast. I don't watch long, there's a strong south wind distorting -15C to -35C, making this evening less than inviting. So, while I was excited about a new solar cycle, it still means that the skies are relatively quiet right now. They should keep building though, usually peaking in activity in the spring.

Scientists have made a new discovery about the lights. While we first really started studying the lights and the ionosphere in 1957 and most of this was done based out of Churchill, we still do not really know what causes them. Over 3000 sounding rockets were fired from the Churchill Rocket Research Range, studying the aurora and other phenomena from 1957 until the last rocket was fired in 1985. The base and military presence in Churchill really started to decline in the late sixties with only a skeleton crew remaining through the seventies and into the early eighties.

Last year, the THEMIS project launched five satellites to essentially 'map' the northern lights and the solar wind. This year, they discovered magnetic 'cords' that connect the Earth to the sun. The northern lights or at least the solar wind or maybe, better put, the energy that creates aurora travels along these cords and is funneled into the Earth's magnetic field.

Backgrounder on THEMIS in Canada

January 13, 2008 - Thawing Out Arctic Hare

The weather has been good for writing this winter, except today, its mild (for Churchill) and a better day for a walk. I took the dogs out through the still hardening snowdrifts and still green trees. It will still be a while before the snow turns to concrete, hardened by the wind, and longer yet before the frost premanently clings to the spruce trees, truly turning the landscape into a series of blues and more blues.

Its pretty still and pretty quiet up here, broken only when my dogs come upon an arctic hare. It sits by the trail, not cold but frozen in the lee of a snowdrift, that is until my dogs inadvertantly stumble upon it and the chase is on. Its not much of a chase, as the Arctic Hare skims over the horizon. He can cover over 1 metre (3') with each hop and sprint over 60 kilometres per hour. WithMoonUnit and Milo, on the other hand, bob through the soft snow, alternately appearing and disappearing in the white.

There seems to be quite a few hare around this winter, probably due to the fact that predators focused on the wealth of lemmings around this summer, instead of the leverets. Hare are born in the summer, in a nest that can hardly be called a nest, hardly noticeable amidst the rocks or the shelter of a clump of spruce. They head out on their own after about two months and rely purely on camoflauge and their mother's instinct until then. Still, the vast majority of hare that are taken are young and inexperienced. In fact, once they reach maturity, Arctic Hare have very few real predators, challenged only by winter's sparsity.

January 11, 2008 - Snowing in Baghdad

In this era of polar bear cub celebrities, quagmires and climate change doomsday prophecies, I found this Reuters article and its kind of a nice start to 2008, not to mention it puts most of my rants about the polar bear capital of the world into perspective.

But it was still lovely, said Mohanned Rahim, a baker: "This snow will bring pleasure to the people of Iraq. It's beautiful!"

(Reporting by Aws Qusay; writing by Peter Graff)

January 10, 2008 - A World Away from Knut and Knutette

As if one cute Knut the polar bear cub wasn't bad enough, now the gag factor seems to have been doubled with the birth of a female cub to Vera the polar bear (less was heard about Vilma's cubs... they think she ate them...). Apparently, there was already a full page ad in Berlin's daily paper showing Knut and Knutette in a big red heart. Now, with the Knut 'polar bear attack' pictures with the cub on a zookeepers leg already in full FW:: force on the internet, its only a matter of time before more polar bear spam appears. (Which by the way, could someone send me the new polar bear attack pictures again, I seem to have erased them and was hoping to post them up here...)

I have kind of mixed feelings about zoos and large wildlife like polar bears. I mean it is good that so many people get exposed to animals they otherwise would not see but it is such a false view of wildlife that its hard to see the true value in it. I know its curmudgeonly to come down on two bear cubs in a big heart but come on... bear's don't partner for life and they have feral sometimes violent sex and then leave. Cubs in a heart to me is almost as creepy as those Anne Gedde's tiny baby pictures... just thinking about them makes me shudder.

And finally, the human-raised, hand-fed factor bothers me a bit. To me, this is just another step in divorcing people from nature. Leave them with their mother, if she is going to eat them, there is probably a reason for that!!! Mothers don't eat their cubs unless there is something wrong!!!

I don't know, Churchill has made me a little harsh, I guess. I just think of the female polar bears and cubs that are about to emerge from their dens in late February and March. In -30C, they make the courageous journey to the bay to begin the fight for survival. Maybe the millions spents on zoo displays and waterparks for polar bears could be spent lobbying the government or buying more land to protect polar bear habitat. Or maybe use that money to help malnutrition in one of the many countries that we abuse to maintain our standard of living (I see the Dalek's being mobilized now... Socialism Alert - Socialism Alert - Destroy! Destroy!)

Okay, that was over the top -helping starving babies, get real Kels... - but my point is how did society get so out of touch with nature that we have made a captive polar bear cub into a celebrity? And more importantly when will he check into ringed seal rehab? But, I digress, as much as the concept of zoos seems a little colonial and a little outdated to me, they do help educate kids and families in urban areas and a true urban life is pretty foreign to me. So, enough contrarianism, there is a naming contest about to get underway for the new female cub in Berlin and I'm going to get on board today!

My vote is 'Paris'.

January 9, 2008 - New Year, Old Flames

Its good to be back in Churchill. The skies are clear, there's a fair bit of snow now making for some spectacular drifts across the tundra and out on the sea ice. So far, I've seen an arctic fox bobbing around, an arctic hare making a midnight dash and the occasional ptarmigan not doing much of anything. Snow covers up a lot of the human impact making Churchill a very pristine arctic landscape. However, it is an arctic landscape with a giant plume of smoke on the horizon.

I always say that Churchill is like any other place except that you cannot really hide the 'naughty' things here, like development, dereliction, scams, shams, conflicts, hypocrisy, bureaucracy, all the fun stuff that can be found anywhere. Well, its a little in your face in our isolated outpost. And, at the forefront of things we would like to hide is, of course, garbage.

Flying into Churchill is an awesome experience, tundra ponds separated by peat mounds and drunken forests create a complicated aerial mosaic, one that gives you the feeling that you are getting a closeup look at Mother Nature's skin. Winter or summer, its quite a sight. Yesterday, that was broken by an orange glow and cloud of grey smoke coming from the old scrap metal dump. A sad reminder of the utter failure of our recycling program.

It sounds like we are just burning cardboard but driving by the flames it looks like a lot more. Tractors and trucks are busy emptying out L5, our recycling and waste transfer station, and moving the garbage a couple miles inland to the burning site. Funny how we spent five years searching for an option for our garbage and how many of these options were nixed because they were too close to the airport and the smoke would interfere with incoming and outgoing flights. Now, we are burning garbage less than a mile from the runway. Another example of how regulations are regulations until they are really inconvenient.

Of course, this is all still better than the proposed garbage dump on the coast of Hudson Bay - someone may have been standing too close to burning garbage and been overcome by fumes when they came up with that one. But not as good as longtime resident Ed Bazlik's idea of just unilaterally dumping garbage at the old dump site and waiting to see how quickly media and then Provincial and Federal government folk come to our 'rescue'.

January 7, 2008 - Another Year, Another Solar Cycle

The Polar Bear Blog is back for another year of northern lights, blizzards, beluga whales, polar bear tourists and polar bears. Bear season and then the following film crew and then Christmas hot on its heels kind of wiped me out for a month or so, but I'm back and heading back to Churchill tomorrow - I think we're getting our first real blizzard or at least first real snowfall today so now is as good a time as any. Should find out soon either way...

Kind of in the middle of a major site redesign so hopefully that all works out by March or so... and we'll have a few surprises for our loyal readers... and hopefully I will be blogging from Mexico for a few weeks in March. Hard to say...

So, its the start of a new Polar Bear Alley and, coincidentally or not so coincidentally, the start of a whole new solar cycle. Last Friday, signalled the first sunspot of the sun's latest eleven year cycle or as scientists' have creatively dubbed it Solar Cycle 24. What this means is that for the next five or six years, solar storms and sunspots will increase on the sun. Solar storms shoot cosmic rays that take about three days to reach the Earth and smash into our magnetic field. The energy created by these collisions creates aurora borealis (and australis, for our southern readers). This is good news for Churchillians because we like Aurora Borealis and while we have still had some pretty awesome northern lights this year, the best and brightest are yet to come. My first two winters in Churchill (2002 and 2003) were peak seasons and pretty packed with northern lights (ah, the good ol' pre-nervous breakdown days... insert wistful sigh). For more northern lights research, here's an update on the THEMIS project.

This solar cycle should peak around December 21, 2012 which according to the Mayan calendar is just in time for the world to end. (Note to self: Ad 'build bunker' to 2011 To Do list.) Come to think of it, when did Terminator mention that SkyNet took over the planet... oh right, that was 1997.

I sometimes mention on Polar Bear Alley how I am not fully convinced that our current warming trend is completely CO2 based and not mostly due to changes in the sun (because there are 44 year cycles above the eleven year cycles... and I mean it is responsible for life on this planet) so here is a good article from ScienceDaily.com about solar cycles, satellites and all that fun stuff. It pretty much says that half the scientists believe that this cycle will be weak and the other half believe it will be stronger than the present one. I think we should launch an eleven year study to find out if we are right....

And, finally, a cheers to the tenth anniversary of the warmest year on record - 1998 when global temperatures averaged 14.54C! Speaking of warm years, here's a sea ice animation that's pretty neat - Hadley Centre map. Its based on current projections of global warming, CO2 output, economic growth and the lack of environmental regulations.