Archive for Churchill

Long trip to Nashville

October 20, 2008 at 12:17 pm · Filed under Churchill, Nashville

This short post is about our last day in Churchill, Manitoba, and the long trip back to Nashville, Tennessee.

We spent yesterday morning in Churchill, out in the boreal woods with our new friends, the dogsled mushers (http://www.blueskymush.com/) going for a hike. With snow falling all around us, the unleashed sled dogs bounding down the trail, and our companions toting bolt-action rifles, India and I felt we had finally gotten in touch with our inner Canadians. We have started dropping “eh?” into our sentences, and talking knowledgeably about junior hockey and back bacon.

It was great to get some exercise in the cold air, and for the kids to get more time playing with the dogs. It was also instructive for me to spend more time with Gerald Azure, the man who owns the dogsledding outfit. Despite living relatively humbly in an inhospitable and isolated place, and despite a very challenging (to say the least) childhood of parental neglect, Gerald seems completely happy and at peace. He loves his wife (and partner) Jennifer, he loves his 19 sled dogs, he loves the land and the snow and the sky around Churchill. And he really loves driving a dog sled, which he gets to do a lot of. Without saying much, Gerald radiates grace and well being and calm. Something for me to think about. The picture above is Gerald letting Zola hold the rifle during our hike.

Our original flight back to Winnipeg was cancelled, then just delayed by several hours, so we managed to Fletch our way onto a charter flight that was leaving on time. With minimal drama (relatively speaking - we were still on an ancient turboprop, taking off in lousy weather) we departed from Churchill and flew down south.

After four days in Churchill, Winnipeg seemed balmy and cosmopolitan. We actually sat and soaked up the afternoon sun for 20 minutes after we arrived.

Later that evening, because we were five passengers, and the taxi driver refused to bend the “four passenger rule” for us, we had to figure out another way to get from our hotel to a restaurant. Creating what will probably be Zola’s and Charlsi’s most abiding memory of the whole polar bear trip, we took a white stretch limousine to the restaurant (less expensive than two cabs). It was funny to me that the limo created more giddy, gee-whiz excitement in the two kids than the Tundra Buggy, or the second polar-bear sighting, or the turboprop plane. I’ve given up trying to predict what will get Zola excited. He was happy, we were happy.

Rae & Jerry’s, where we went for dinner, is a perfectly preserved, circa 1957 , retro fine dining steak house. It is a Winnipeg institution: red velvet, bucket seats in the cocktail lounge, dark wood paneling. We had a good dinner, celebrated our ploar bear adventure, called Amit the limo driver to take us back to the hotel, and got everyone to bed.

We were out of the hotel by about 6:15 this morning, through check-in and U.S. customs and passport control on the Winnipeg side by 7:30, and airborne at 8:30. We changed planes again in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and were back in Nashville just before noon. Aside from the woman in the seat in front of Zola complaining repeatedly to the flight attendant that he was kicking her (we eventually switched his seat), the flights were uneventful.

The polar bear trip was cool. We have a lot to think about and talk about over the next few days as we process the experience. Churchill is not quite ready for prime time as a tourist destination, but we had a great time, and we sure saw a lot of polar bears.

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Day 3 in Churchill

October 18, 2008 at 6:57 pm · Filed under Canada, Churchill

This short post is about our third day in Churchill, Manitoba, and our second day riding around in a Tundra Buggy.

The second day was terrific, but two days is probably enough. Once again we were out for nearly 9 hours, from a little after 8am until a little before 5pm. Right after we “launched” we spent a long time looking at a mother bear and two yearling cubs. The cubs wrestled and played and chased each other around, which was great. Throughout the course of the day we saw about 15 bears. India must have taken more than 100 pictures of polar bears, so we should have plenty.

Once again, the best part of the experience was standing outside on the viewing deck (even though today was overcast and misty), smelling the wind off the bay and looking at polar bears. In the late afternoon we saw a big black-and-white Snowy Owl standing on the ground near the Tundra Buggy camp. After a few minutes the owl flew gracefully right past us. Beautiful animal, very special thing to see.

More important than the game viewing or the rest of the Churchill experience, two people here have made me reconsider my son.


Maybe because Zola and I have been spending too much time together, or maybe because of my own failings as a home-school teacher, or maybe I am just a grouch, but I have been very impatient with (and harsh on) my son lately. To be honest, it has been a frequent source of stress for the whole family, as I overreact to his behavior, and everyone gets upset.

Marc the Tundra Buggy driver pulled me aside this afternoon to tell me that Zola is special and smart and very sweet, and that he really enjoyed having Zola on the vehicle for the last two days. Hmmmmm. Makes me think.

For dinner this evening, we went back to Gypsy’s restaurant in Churchill for the second night in a row. As we were leaving. our waiter from last night also made a special point of telling me how much he enjoyed spending time with Zola, and what a good kid he seemed to be. Hmmmm again. Makes me think more.

I said to the waiter, “Well, that’s nice of you to say, but he does a lot of things that…” The waiter interrupted me to say “It’s easy to find faults in your own kids. Please, I ask you, take a step back and realize what a wonderful little boy this one is.”

Something for me to think about, for sure.

This evening the weather turned nasty here in Churchill. The wind is up to 20-30 miles per hour, and it alternates between snow and freezing rain. I can’t even imagine what real winter is like here, after the tourists and he bears have all left. All of the pine trees have needles and branches only on their southwestern sides, showing how strong the winds get. We have been told that there is a serious problem with alcohol and drug use, which is sad but not surprising. Tough place.

Everyone is starting to hunker down, except for the polar bears, who are just waiting patiently for the ice to form, so they can get on with their hunting.

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Tracking polar bears in Churchill

October 17, 2008 at 7:27 pm · Filed under Canada, Churchill

This post is about our first day in the Tundra Buggy, tracking polar bears in Northern Manitoba.

Polar bears are the main attraction here in Churchill. The “bear season” lasts about six weeks, from early October until mid-November, ending once the Hudson Bay has frozen over, and the bears can go off and hunt seals on the ice all winter.

This morning our little group of 16 people gathered at about 7:45am (long before sunrise), and was shuttled out to the Tundra Buggy launching station, 15 minutes outside of town. We were dressed in our snowsuits and hats, and ready for the first of our two days tracking polar bears.

Our shuttle bus driver was a young Dutch man, who is travelling around Canada for a year. When I asked, “Why are you travelling around Canada for a year?” he gave a very pragmatic, Dutch answer: “Canada is a big country, and I figured it would take a year to travel around it.”


Tundra Buggies are purpose-built vehicles for exploring the marshy tundra terrain around Churchill, looking for polar bears. Because water doesn’t drain well through the permafrost, the flat landscape is dotted with large, shallow (2-3 feet deep) lakes. Each buggy is a cross between a diesel-powered monster truck (five-foot high tires and a heavy duty chassis) an old municipal bus (a 30-foot long, big-windowed white box, all riveted together), and an amphibious landing vehicle. Each Tundra Buggy also has an open-air viewing deck on the back. It is ideally suited for driving on the rough roads and through the shallow icy lakes around Churchill. The theoretical maximum speed of a Tundra Buggy is 25 miles per hour, but we spent most of our time crawling along (bumpily) at about 10 mph.

Our Tundra Buggy driver and guide, Marc, is a Churchill classic. He is a French Canadian, and works as a river guide in the Yukon during the summer, and as a dog-sled guide in the Canadian Rockies during the winter. The six-week bear season in Churchill fits in perfectly, so he has been driving a Tundra Buggy for the last ten years. Mark is very handsome, friendly and competent, and was particularly sweet to Zola and Charlsi. India conveyed her general approval by telling me “Marc must get a lot of babes during bear season.”

We drove around in the Tundra Buggy from about 8:30am to 5pm, which is a lot of time in a Tundra Buggy. Fortunately, within the first hour we saw a mother bear and her two-year old cub. Obligingly they came right up to the vehicle, sniffed the tires, and were very photogenic and accommodating.

After looking at the first pair for nearly an hour, we drove around and looked at other bears, sleeping, trotting along, drinking water. Marc told us that this is a “waiting time,” and that the bears don’t want to expend a lot of energy until they can start hunting. That didn’t matter, they were awesome to look at (very picturesque against the brown vegetation and black water of the glacial lakes and the Hudson Bay).

When we switched off the diesel engines, and I could stand on the back deck in the cool wind, smelling the water and watching the bears do their thing, it was just great.

All in we saw eleven bears today, although it seems a little too special to keep track just by quantifying the sightings. We also saw (and tracked) an Arctic fox, and many, many ptarmigans. Ptarmigans, I found out, are medium-sized white ground birds, which are at the bottom of the food chain for every predator in the Arctic. As we rolled slowly across the tundra, Marc explained a lot about the ecosystem and its animals, and he regaled us with tales of the north country.

It was a wonderful day.

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