Polar Bear Country
In the northern reaches of Manitoba, resting on the edge of Canada’s Hudson Bay, sits the small town of Churchill. Home to fewer than 1000 year-round residents, Churchill is a remarkable place: it plays host to an annual beluga whale migration, is visited by the Northern Lights over 300 times per year, and sits in a pristine tundra that truly embodies the term “wilderness”. Churchill’s most famous visitor, however, is the mighty Polar Bear. Every year, hundreds of bears gather on the shoreline surrounding Churchill, awaiting the sea ice that forms on Hudson Bay during winter. Once it forms, they’ll use it as a platform from which to hunt seals, but until then, they wait on the coast, creating a fascinating, and potentially dangerous, interaction between the residents of Churchill and the world’s largest land carnivore.
