Linda

Linda was kind of the start of Churchill's polar bear research and Churchill's polar bear tourism.

In the very early seventies, the Churchill garbage dump was... a bit of a challenge. Bears would gather amidst the burning garbage and have a snack and all that. When polar bear research began, they would set up snares (and still do) to catch bears, drug them, do their research, then spray paint a giant number on their side and let them go.

Linda was one of the most popular returning visitors to Churchill and Churchill's dump. She had a good disposition despite some very bad habits. After her first capture as a subadult, she brought successive generations of cubs back to Churchill and back to the Churchill dump.

Her first encounter is recorded in Fred Bruemmer's book 'The Kingdom of the Polar Bear'. It was a different time (before the word ecotourism was invented) and he writes about feeding Linda by hand while she lay beside the bear snare and the way she gently took the food from his hand. Of course, when he was later photographing polar bears from the tower at Cape Churchill (in pre-Tundra Buggy days), she became a bit of a curse, always hanging around the bottom of the tower waiting for her friend to come down.

Obviously, feeding a bear is the wrong thing to do and Bruemmer caught an earful from Dr. Charles Jonkel, the first polar bear researcher up here. Both Bruemmer and Jonkel had many experiences with Linda and her young, some of whom eventually became known as 'The Gang of Four' who basically claimed the Churchill dump as their own. Churchill lore has it that Linda was actually named after a nurse who was resident in Churchill at the time.

She ended up at the Albuquerque Zoo in New Mexico and lived to a ripe old age of 41. Ulu, her daughter, is currently residing at the San Francisco Zoo and looking for a mate!