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 Blog 

Today's Blog 
Hudson Bay Quest 2007
February 15-March 19, 2007
January 14-February 15, 2007
December-January12, 2007
December 1-10, 2006
November 20-30, 2006
November 5-20, 2006
October 27-Nov5, 2006
October 19-26, 2006
October 9-18, 2006
October 1-October 9, 2006
Sept 24-October 1, 2006
Sept 15-23, 2006
Sept 1-8, 2006
August 20-31, 2006
August 8-17, 2006
August 1-8, 2006  
July 25-31, 2006  
July 18-24, 2006   
July 12-17, 2006   
July 2006   
June 2006  
May 2006 
Archived articles

Polar Bear Blog - Nudge Nudge - July 31, 2006

There is a place in Churchill, along the Churchill River, called The Flats. It used to be populated by the Cree and few white trappers in the early days of Churchill. Today, it has kind of a shanty town feel, still hanging on to a slower pace of life of another era (yes, even slower than Churchill itself). It is also reputed to be a good place to occasionally 'feel no pain'.

One local, who for dramatic purposes we will call LL, was 'feeling no pain' this weekend as a late night party drifted along the riverbank. Finished for the evening, he headed, not quite straight, for home. That's the nice thing about the flats: if you need to rest before you get home, you can.

So, LL was resting alongside the road when he was awakened by a gentle and persistent nudging. He growled awake, as many of us are prone to do returning from dreamland, with his fists and teeth clenched, ready to clobber this intrusion. Turning, he came eye to eye, although still relatively at ground level but eye to eye nonetheless, with a big ol' polar bear.

Seems this bear had been poking at him with its nose, possibly sizing him up for a meal, possibly just trying to wake him up. Regardless of its intentions, it more than succeeded in the latter.

Polar Bear Blog - East Wind - July 31, 2006

A strong east wind is terrorizing the tundra today. The plants and trees bend to its will, in colourful subjugation (sorry... I had to use that line, it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the fireweed in my yard...and yes, I am sober).

It has been a great summer for fireweed, one of Churchill's more prolific plants. A disturbance vegetation, it grows on old roads, building sites and gravel pits, and since the military was in Churchill for about forty years, testing ordinances, vehicles and personel, pretty much everything has been disturbed at one time or another.

Fireweed is a brilliant purple, growing tall maybe two or three feet in places. A series of flowers adorns the top third of it, emerging from a thick stalk with sharp, green, almost snapdragon-like leaves.

And they are tasty leaves. Fireweed is one of the more edible plants up here - the young leaves, stems and flowers all can be eaten raw or cooked (with butter). It is a nice addition to a salad, tasting, in my opinion, a little like nasturtium (a little spicy).

Polar Bear Blog - Loony Tunes - July 30, 2006

Calm night at Camp Nanuq - good for working your veranda, even better if I wouldn't have cut two of the logs one foot short. Sigh.

Naturally, when a project is going somewhat unperfectly, you need to take a step back. Naturally, that is what I did. Our Pacific Loons were on the lake so I sat on my half-finished veranda, even if it is more of a deck right now, and chatted with my feathered friends.

Loons have two fairly common calls. One is a forlorn wailing, not unlike a child crying, and the other is a rising and falling 'do-do-do-dee-de-do-do' or is it 'do-do-dee-do-de-do'...hmmm. Anyway, let's just agree that I am not a professional loon caller but I could be worse.

My skills are just honed enough to peak the males attention. Loons are aggressive birds and very territorial. Males may compete for or defend their territory to the death.

Loons are heavy birds that need a long airstrip to take flight, unlucky loons that get stranded on small ponds may even starve to death, unable to get airborne and too awkward to walk to the next lake. So, when another male intrudes on someone else's territory, it becomes a big, splashing chase from one end of the pond to the other. Both birds swim frantically along, waving their wings, the weaker trying to take flight, the stronger trying to take the weaker bird!

This continues back and forth until the stronger catches the weaker bird and drives his beak into his back. This may continue until one dies or the stronger simply relents. I have seen it on this lake and others many times but not tonite.

Everyone was pretty cool, just a mated pair hanging out, perfectly reflected in the shallow water. My calling brought the male in fairly close - curious and defiant of this new 'bird's' accent. A nice moment but, in my experience, there is a funny thing with loons - they don't like rap music. Just when his curiosity was piqued, CBC Radio 3 popped on a song by 'Mood Ruff' and he swam away. Maybe next time, I'll try Hank Williams.

Polar Bear Blog - Bears Again! - July 30, 2006

Finally, a polar bear update on the polar bear blog.

L5, Churchill's recycling centre, is chugging along, at least at the local level, who knows what is going on in the bureaucracy above. Anyway, there is still garbage in there waiting to be shipping out and still bear attractive smells. However, most bears have either been escorted away by Manitoba Conservation or have simply moved on once they decide it is too much effort to break-in to the building.

Of course, not ALL bears think it is too much effort. There is one mid-sized young male that has become kind of a resident at L5. He comes around at night or early in the morning and sneaks in only to disappear during the day when Conservation Officers are looking for him.

While town workers keep upgrading the defences to L5, he keeps finding innovative methods of accessing this big, wonderful pile of rotting garbage. One of his latest excusions into L5 came at the expense of the back wall. Since all the windows are barred, this bear simply peeled away the wall, wood, insulation and all, and squeezed in to the building. An eight foot drop off a rock face and he was in.

Of course, he has been 'busted' by town employees one or two times. Last week, in his panic to escape, he actually squeezed UNDER the iron gates at L5. Those gates are only 10" off the ground. If a bear can get his head through something, you can be assured that the rest of him will somehow squeeze through as well.

Stay tuned for the hide and seek updates this summer.

Polar Bear Blog - July 28/29, 2006

Another day another veranda. Actually still the same veranda but another post. It was my girlfriend Carmen's birthday on Friday so I thought I would build a screened in porch (although bug season has been fairly mild up here). So with a dull chainsaw blade and some watery gasoline, I carved up a few trees for my post and beam construction.

Of course, since then, clouds continue rolling in off the horizon and periodically spittering and spattering us with rain. Quite nice if you are not trying to build a veranda.

I figured I would write about rain or more specifically, the smell of rain. Up here, a cool clean breeze inevitably signals an approaching shower. Somehow, the fields of fireweed and sweet gale and yarrow smells sweeter and the air kind of feels like 'spring'.

So, the word of the day is 'petrichor' or the organic oil that exudes from plants into the surrounding rocks and soil. As it rains, the water releases this oil, along with another compound called geosmin, and releases the smell of 'spring' even though it is summer right now.

Polar Bear Blog - Munck Revised - July 26, 2006

Another entry for today... you see, I could write about Jens Munck everyday because he was a pretty cool cat...and tough as nails. In fact, when I first came to Churchill, I told everyone I was going to open a martini bar on the tundra called Munck's Cafe. Of course, Munck's Cafe only ever existed in my mind, although I must say the occasional martini does get served there.

Anyway, this is my Munck revised entry and Munck has truly been revised. I took Lawrence Millman, a writer and, much like myself, an arctic groupie, over to the Munck site yesterday. It was a fabulous walk, something done by very few people but something that more people should do!

We scrambled over rocks, followed 400 year old maps and variously debated, argued and agreed over where and what was where and what at the old Munck site.

What baffled us, however, is that we both agreed that we had found the original site of Munck's ringbolts or ship mooring. In effect, the first and only remaining evidence of Munck, a.k.a. the first Europeans EVER to visit Churchill.

But there were no ringbolts. Only iron stains weeping down the rock and two chunks of proto-quartzite chipped out of the rockface. Naturally, these were the former sites of the mooring rings.

Now, I understand the argument for removing this wonderful little piece of history but I hate it. It is accessibility, preservation, etc... If we chip these rings out of the rock, everyone can see them. Sure, they are completely out of context and really have zero meaning left in them, but people can see them.

There are some things that are meant to be remote and are meant to be challenging and are meant to mean something. This is another part of Churchill's history that is simply gone. Churchill is in a transition and I don't think I like it.

Polar Bear Blog - Munck Site - July 26, 2006

The old bones are sore today. Yesterday was another full day of hiking across river. Another perfect day across river, eight hours of sun and occasional cloud and just enough wind to keep the blackflies and mosquitoes at bay.

Crossing the river to Cockles Point (the old site of White Whale Lodge - more about that later...), we started our journey south to the old town site and the original wintering site of Jens Munck.

Munck was the first European to overwinter in the Churchill area and one of the first Europeans to enter Hudson Bay. In 1619, the 64 men of the Munck expedition arrived in the Churchill River and set up camp in the first suitable cove, preparing for winter.

Things started off pretty well. It was late August and they found berries and game. They caught and rendered a beluga whale which inevitably attracted a polar bear, which they shot, anticipating a hearty meal for the entire crew.

Of course, that is where things sort of went astray. Only Munck as Captain cooked his polar bear meat. The rest of the crew, both as tradition and as a means of saving valuable fuel, only marinated the meat in vinegar. And here is where the problem lay.

Polar bear meat is today well known for containing high levels of trichinosis, a parasite that eats away at you and your immune system, most commonly found in raw pork.

Well, to make a long story short, the following summer Munck and the two remaining men, dragged themselves up the rocky shoreline to gather berries and eventually gain enough strength to sail one of their ships, the Lamprey, back across the Atlantic - an incredible journey that is virtually unnoticed in the annals of arctic history.

The problem was is that Munck was kind of cursed. When he got back to Denmark, he was thrown in jail (for one of his sailor's crimes), the king harangued him for leaving his favorite ship halfway across the globe, not to mention his wife had left him and thrown away most of his clothes. Munck would only be released from jail when King Christian of Denmark started running out of breathing sea captains in his latest naval conflict. It was in this conflict that, from a distance, Munck watched the Lamprey sink. Despite his iron will, that moment was what ultimately broke him and he gradually declined until his death back on land in Denmark. He is buried in an unmarked grave.

Polar Bear Blog - Belugas Galore - July 25, 2006

I will have a polar bear update pretty soon. They have been up to some crazy things around here but this is peak beluga whale season and the river is pretty amazing right now.

Yesterday was a good day. There were two accessible high tides (9am and 9pm) meaning that I spent four or five hours out on the river watching whales. Heading out at 7am, I ended up being all alone on the river with probably 3,000 whales.

With the capelin running, the whales were active, hunting and herding schools of these little fish. It was so still that you could even hear their echolocations through the hull of the zodiac boat. Hearing these spooky, spacey sounds, you really get an idea why old sailors used to called these whales the 'canaries of the sea'.

The belugas come into the river to give birth and moult and eat and generally relax in the warmer waters of the estuary. With numbers peaking right now, it is pretty common to see 360 degrees of whales once you are out in the channel, ranging from bright white rippling bulls to gangs of grey sub-adults to mothers gently swimming under their newborn babies, supporting their first efforts at swimming.

Heading out today to cross the river and hike to the old Jens Munck wintering site. Should be fun assuming we do not get eaten by a bear.

Polar Bear Blog - July 24, 2006

I should probably just change the name of this blog because everything up here is way too neat not to write about. So today I'm talking about birds. Actually, just one bird, in fact, a raptor that is cruising around just outside my window right now.

It is a Northern Harrier (the ones the fighter jets are named after) hunting and hovering around Camp Nanuq. Harriers, also called Marsh Hawks up here (as opposed to seagulls which are called sh*t hawks up here), are fairly common migrants to the Churchill area. This one is a female, dark brown, highlighted by a white bar across its narrow tail. She is pretty large for a harrier, probably 2' long with a 4' plus wingspan.

They seem precarious and graceful at once, flying low over the tundra or teetering 10-12' off the ground searching for prey, sometimes stopping in mid-air to scan, motionless and impossibly aloft, looking and listening for anything at all. They cruise along hunting lemmings and voles, the arctic's rodents - our version of mice minus the tail.

Harriers and other raptors track their prey with their highly develped eyesight. At least 8x superior to man's, they can spot movement from impossible distances and may even be able to track prey by the residue of their warm little bodies, creating almost a 'Mondrian' grid of neon heat traces on the tundra.

Even their predatory look is an adaptation to hunting. Their hooked beak adapted to tearing flesh and their equally hooked brow adapted to shield their eyes, both from sun and flailing little rodents.

Polar Bear Blog - July 23, 2006

We are soaked in a thick fog this morning, my own lake barely visible. Think of it as a hangover from last night's antics; a continuing barrage of lightning and thunder and torrential rain.

This seems to be the result of a hot northern summer. While Churchill has enjoyed a very reasonable 15-20C, the rest of the northern Manitoba has been up around 25-30C. As the air warms over the land, south winds begin to push this air north towards the bay, creating tremendous, billowing cumulus clouds along the way.

Two years ago, we watched these thunderclouds turn over on themselves as they moved over Churchill and onto the cool, brackish water of Hudson Bay. With their puffy domes and towers collapsing, the clouds turned their anger from the Bay to our town. We went from the hotspot in Manitoba at 25C to the cold spot (around 5C) and golf ball size hail in less than five minutes.

Yesterday, you could see the storms building on the horizon by about 1 or 2 pm. It would take about five hours for them to reach Churchill and unleash their fury. Nevertheless, it was pretty amazing, provided that you were inside.

The only real problem with these incredible lightning displays is for the polar bears. Often, with storms such as these, the majority of the rain occurs when they reach the coast. The same cannot be said for lightning. Considering this has been a fairly dry summer, the northern forest and tundra can ignite quickly.

Coming from the south, these lightning strikes occur directly over the polar bear maternity denning area. Any fires in there destroy polar bear dens that have been active for decades. With little suitable habitat available for new dens, this can be a major difficulty for the western Hudson Bay bears.

Here is a link to the forest fire update from the Province of Manitoba. So far, it looks to be a fairly reasonable fire season in the north (click here for historical fire information - 1914-2004) but scientists figure that a changing climate will mean more dry summers, more lightning strikes and more challenges for the polar bears of Churchill.