Remeber, Remember, The Time I Was A Bear Chaser (Part One)

"How far north do you have to go in order to even find a polar bear to chase?"

Well, Not as far as you thought. 58° 46 N'. Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

The statue of a polar bear welcomes travelers from all over the world at the town's entrance

Maybe you are somewhat surprised by how "south" one can encounter  polar bears, not to mention that this place is called by many as the "Polar Bear Capital of the World".

I have to admit, I was quite surprised when I first heard about the place. In 2013 when I worked in the province of Manitoba for the summer, I booked a trip to Churchill immediately after I saved enough money. 

Churchill is a town that's not accessible by roads from the rest of North America. It is located north of the treeline on the vast arctic permafrost (it's all frozen underground permanently, so trees wouldn't grow in this region) along the Hudson Bay. One has to take a 2 hour flight from Winnipeg or hop on a train from Winnipeg which takes about 3 days. I chose the latter way to reach Churchill because in that way I could see more of Manitoba.

The town of Churchill

When I arrived in Churchill, it was in late August. Temperature wise it was hovering somewhere around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The cold wind blowing from the Arctic through the vast Hudson Bay, however, made me feel like that it was already winter time. Churchill is a town of roughly 900 people, with the majority of them being the Aboriginal Canadians.  Because the town is very small, everyone knows each other. When a local Cree girl saw me wandering around the town like a lost sheep, she came up to me and asked whether she could help. I told her that I was looking for a bed and breakfast I booked online and gave out the owners name. She immediately pointed me to the direction and described how the bed and breakfast looked like. when I arrived at the bed and breakfast, the door was wide open. So I went in and met my hosts. The Goulds were a young couple with a very cute daughter named Hannah.  When I asked them why the door was wide open when I came in, they simply told me that in Churchill, because everyone knows each other well and everyone knows the fact that no one in the town could possibly commit property crime (come to think of it, there is nowhere to transport the stolen goods or get rid of them in a place like Churchill). It just simply does not make any sense to even install a lock on your house door, especially when people in Churchill treat each other just like their own family members. The Goulds told me that there was no need to give me a key either. For my entire stay in Churchill, whenever I felt like I wanted to get back to the bed and breakfast, all I needed to do was to simply push the door open and hop on my bed. 
 

The entrance to Churchill, featuring the town's only relate-able landmark: The Port of Churchill

My bed and breakfast also happened to have bicycles available to lend free of charge. I was told that for bicycle parking, I could literally drop my bicycle anywhere in Churchill and pick it up at the same spot  (again, no locks). As a biking enthusiast back home, I was somewhat excited about having access to a bicycle in Churchill: It simply gave me the opportunity to reach places many others could not, especially when Churchill had no road access and the town was surrounded by the harsh and unforgiving mother nature.

Hudson Bay from somewhere in Churchill

The late summer sun in Churchill at 6:00 pm made me feel like that it was more like 2:00 pm. There my first day of adventure began. On the bicycle I borrowed from the Goulds family, I first went to the waterfront right behind the town's hospital following the gravel road. There was a small square which had an Inukshuk. Behind the Inukshuk, it was the open water of the mighty Hudson Bay, with its water so blue that only the color of sapphire could be compared with. Then I had definitely one of the most amazing experiences in my life: It was me alone, facing the vast, blue ocean, with thousands of snow white colored Beluga whales flipping from somewhere 1000 yards away from me all the way to the end of the horizon.  I had never seen so many ocean dwelling animals all together at once in my life before. Yet I felt very pleasing and fortunate that the first time I got the chance to see so many ocean dwelling animals, I saw the so ever elegant and hard to spot Beluga whales.

The Inukshuk at Churchill waterfront

Then I saw a sign right beside me. It read:

POLAR BEAR ALERT PROGRAM:  
STOP     
DON'T WALK IN THIS AREA

The sign

I wasn't walking anyways, I was on a bike.

Instead of turning back, I ventured myself further away from the town of Churchill. The first place I hit was Churchill's iconic port building. To be honest, I thought the building looked a little bit of scary as it was monstrously big in compare to everything else in the surrounding area. All the railways went straight into the giant, empty gaps that just looked like the building's many mouths. Some of the windows on the building were shattered or broken in half, which made the building looked more like an abandoned, haunted fortress. Apparently the port provided a handful number of jobs to many who lived in Churchill. The port is mostly responsible for the export of Canadian wheat to Russia through the Arctic Ocean, which is directly north of Churchill. 

The railway and the port building

Near the port building, there were several ponds where I found many Canada geese. It is evident that the nature around Churchill was very little disturbed by the human communities nearby in compare to other places. At that moment I felt that spending 3 longs days on a train just to reach a place like Churchill was well worth it.

The area just outside of Churchill was a haven for birds

As I kept going, I found an abandoned military building on a small hill. There were two men wandering around the building with their All Terrain Vehicles parked aside. As I went up the hill, they came down. They told me that the building was all locked up, and there was no need to check it out. However, they did warn me to not linger too long in the area alone as there were spottings of polar bears in that area just the day before. After bidding farewell, the two men hopped onto their ATVs and went towards Churchill.

The abandoned military building

I wasn't lingering around, I was on a bicycle. 

For some reason I started to think that maybe encountering a polar bear wasn't a bad idea at all. So I kept following the gravel road on my bike.  After climbing a little hill I saw a couple of residential buildings not far away ahead of me. I was wondering whether there were people living in there right now so I could talk to them and know a little bit more about living in a such beautiful, destitute, and yet dangerous place. 

The abandoned village on the hill

It turned out that the buildings were completely abandoned. It kind of reminded me the portrayal of the post- nuclear age as shown by Sci-fi movies and video games: a small group of human survivors established a community in the middle of nowhere. What surround them are the abandoned military facilities and houses. The community is constantly facing challenges from the harsh environment, which could easily perish them all. I had imagined if one day there is a nuclear war that's able to wipe out most of the human race, the survivors will live in a setting that pretty much looks like Churchill. 

An abandoned house facing the Hudson Bay

Eventually the gravel road took me to a small wooden hut with a Canadian flag flying high but alone on the great arctic tundra. Beside the hut, there was a sign:

NO PARKS CANADA STAFF ON SITE 

PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION AS THERE MAY BE POLAR BEARS IN THE AREA. IF A POLAR BEAR IS SIGHTED. PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR VEHICLE AND CALL POLAR BEAR ALERT.

This was more like a disclaimer than a sign that warns people about dangers

What if I don't have a vehicle? I came all the way to here on a bike.

I somehow flinched a bit. As I looked around, there were no people in sight. There wasn't even an abandoned vehicle or something I could hide in. Yet the worst part is, my cellphone had no network coverage in Churchill, which means I couldn't even use my phone. If I ever encounter a polar bear, chances are I am doomed.

But hey, I still have a bicycle, and I can ride really fast.
 

The scenery in the Cape Merry area

I went up to the hill behind the wooden hut, what  in front of my eyes was a barren like landscape where bulky boulders dominated the area. Churchill was already out of the sight from where I stood. The surrounding scenery gave me a sense of deja vu: it seemed that I had always dreamed to be there. However I never thought that such beauty came with great dangers which could jeopardize my safety. I had to constantly check the surrounding for polar bears while taking pictures of the area. It made realized that no dream is easy to achieve. One has to fight all the hardships to reach the dream. Yet the truth is, that in order to keep the dream vivid and alive, one must fight ever harder. 

The barren like landscape. The ground is permanently frozen below the rocks.

Along the trail, there were several monuments erected to commemorate early explorations to the region. Many explorers, including the famous Jens Munk, had set foot on the area of what we call today Churchill. However, because of the area's extreme climate and harsh environment, most of the explorers ended up losing their lives and having their bodies and souls resting forever along the shores of Hudson Bay. There were 65 men in Jens Munk exploration when they first arrived from Denmark. One year later, only 3 people, including Jens Munk himself, survived and returned to Europe. I couldn't help but wonder about the last thoughts those explorers who died might have. Did they die with lots of regrets, resentments, and disappointment of the new land they found? Or were they satisfied to die in such a beautiful place and being very proud of what they had accomplished?

The little pyramid looking thing is one of the monuments

Eventually I was taken to Cape Merry. On the other side of the Churchill River, there stood a mighty fortress called Fort Prince of Wales. There were several cannons left at the historic military compound at Cape Merry. It was clear to me that the area was heavily armed and well defended. After all it was once the easiest way for fur traders to ship out their harvests to Europe. As time progresses, modern infrastructure seemed to make Churchill no longer irrelevant. Every single day the Trans Canada Railway and the Trans Canada Highway would transport billions of dollars worth of goods across Canada, and giant container ships coming in and out of cities like Vancouver and Halifax to countries all over the world. Whereas if you look at Churchill today, it's not even connected to the rest of the country by road. 
 

Fort Prince of Wales from Cape Merry

The sun began to sink low on the horizon. I realized that probably I needed to head back to Churchill before the darkness settled in. I climbed down and went back to my bicycle.On one hand I somehow felt very relieved  that I didn't encounter any polar bears. On the other hand, I started to worry that polar bears might come out during dinner time (I just thought polar bears had the same meal schedules as humans), and there was a helpless traveler in the middle of nowhere alone to prey on.

A field full of wild tundra berries (the red ones). In summer months the polar bears often come to the field and eat those berries. The locals also call them "bearberries". It somewhat looked and tasted like lingonberries.

One hills after another, I followed the trail where I came from, hoping to reach Churchill to catch up dinner with other fellow travelers whom I met on the train, but the view of the Hudson Bay in front of me somehow made me wanted to stay around a little bit longer. As I looked up, a flock of Canadian geese were flying towards the south. It seemed that the nice, short summer would be gone very soon, and the cold, harsh winter was on its way.

Canadian geese flying over the Churchill River

I made it to Churchill before the sun went down in the west. I met with my train mates Liz, Pam, and Uldo at a local pub and we had some exotic meat dinner together. Then we began to talk about our own adventures happened on that day. When I mentioned my trip to the Cape Merry area by myself on a bicycle alone, an Aboriginal man sitting next to us said:

"Oh my god, are you f***ing stupid?"

I was utterly confused by that man's reaction. I just smiled to him and quickly moved my head away, hoping that it could help me to slip away from whatever conversation the man might generate with me.

"Were you smiling? Probably if you did see a polar bear you wouldn't be sitting here smiling at all!".  Looked like my tactic didn't work.

Then the man began to tell everyone in the pub about how stupid I was to venture into the polar bear country alone. "You know how easy to find a polar bear here? You open up a can of tuna, leave it at your front door, shut your window tight, and watch until the bears come and take it away. You were bragging about riding a bike? Oh f***. You can't possibly outrun these guys, they are goona knock you over."
 

The port building in the evening

Pam, who was a professor of English literature at the University of Manitoba asked me: "so how was Cape Merry?"

I told her about the beautiful sceneries, monuments, the cannons, and Fort Prince of Wales.  Pam replied:

"Actually one of the main reasons why I decided to come to Churchill is to see Cape Merry. There was a book I was particularly interested in and the book was about the early expeditions to the Cape Merry area. I was trying to go there earlier today but the locals told me that there were very frequent encounters between humans and polar bears in the area. That's why I didn't go. Probably tomorrow  I will hire a taxi to go there."

We stayed until the pub closed its door. Nighttime in Churchill was dark and cold. The bartender told us if the sky is clear and the night is dark, we could actually see the Northern Lights right above our heads. I first checked the empty land next to the pub, but the lights emitting from the port building became very distracting. On my way back to the bed and breakfast, I suddenly had the urge to find out how the Hudson Bay would look like at night. Bingo! The waterfront square with the Inukshuk would be a perfect spot to check out both the Hudson Bay and Northern Lights. 
 

The port building at night time. It was all dark outside

When I arrived at the square, it was very windy. I could hear the whistle of the cold wind clashing with the wild coast and the gigantic water body of the Hudson Bay. The bay was like a giant blackhole: there wasn't a single trace of any lights. I took out the military flashlight I bought from the army base I worked during the summer and pointed it towards the bay, but all the lights were sucked and trapped into the seemingly perpetual darkness without letting a single ray to escape (I think I had just proved that dark energy and dark matter actually exist). I was terrified, and could feel a shiver down my spine.

Then I saw a sign not far from me. It was too dark for me to see what the sign was about, but I suddenly realized that I knew exactly what was written on it:

POLAR BEAR ALERT PROGRAM:  
STOP     
DON'T WALK IN THIS AREA

I immediately turned my bike around, and racing towards my bed and breakfast as fast as I could.

(Continued in Part Two..........Here is a preview of what happened the next day)

I think it noticed me