Chad Pata: Searching for Polar Bears
The whimsical kind you make to your kid at the end of a great day, “if you keep your grades up, your senior year you can pick where our family vacation is.” I envisioned a Disney Cruise, or for my Homer-obsessed middle schooler, a trip to Greece. Instead, this Oct. 1 found myself in a Canada Goose parka staring at the Hudson Bay on the edge of the Arctic Circle in the back of an oversized school bus surrounded by polar bears wondering how the heck did I end up here? Parents, be careful what you promise.
My daughter, concerned with the state of the environment as most her age are, wanted to see her favorite animal in the wild before we melted away their entire habitat and seeing as she is positioned to be valedictorian of her class, I was in no position to tell her “no.” But how does a family from Hawai‘i do such a thing?
After extensive research by my wife there is one spot in North America that is known as “Polar Bear Capital of the World,” the quiet little town of Churchill, Manitoba, 600 miles due north of Winnipeg. The polar bears congregate here at the mouth of the Churchill river in October of every year to await the freezing of the sea ice on Hudson Bay so they can commence hunting their primary food source: seals. But during these few Autumn weeks the bears can be seen up close with the proper guides and preparation.
The first step in getting to Churchill from Hawai‘i is getting to Winnipeg, a delightful city of just under 800,000 people who are obsessed with their hockey team and have a keen interest in human rights. They are home to the world’s biggest civil rights museum, the Canadian Museum for Human rights (humanrights.ca), which at 260,000-square-feet is five times bigger than its U.S. counterpart in Birmingham, Alabama. The structure, even if devoid of its eight floors of fascinating exhibits, would be worth a visit
as the masterpiece of architect Antoine Predock with its mirrored glass shell and 300-foot-tall spire. The nearly $400 million price tag is unimaginable until you see the structure filling the sky then you can only wonder how it didn’t cost twice as much. When we needed a break from the information overload, we popped in to their era Bistro where they have locally sourced favorites like Northern Pikecakes and pan-seared Arctic Char.
But we were not here for city living, so that evening we attended our orientation with Frontiers North, received our rental winter gear and Baffin boots, and snuggled in to rest up for our two hour flight north to the Arctic.
There are a few companies doing tours on this former World War II-era airbase, but Frontiers North (frontiersnorth.com) boasts the best access and most experienced guides. Once in Churchill, tour buses drive you to the Tundra Buggy station, where an armed guard is constantly surveying the area for bears. We load up the Buggy, which is ostensibly a double-wide school bus on monster truck tires with an observation deck built on the back. Here we met our guide, Churchill native and guide since 1991, Kevin Burke, who spent the next two days regaling us with tales of his encounters with the bears and local knowledge (fun tidbit: residents never lock their cars in Churchill so that anyone can take shelter in them if they encounter a bear).
The roads onto the tundra were built by the U.S. military in the 1940s and
due to Canadian environmental laws are not allowed to be improved to allow the tundra to retake itself. The result is potholes that could swallow a Volkswagen (thus the need for oversized tires) and some the most strangely beautiful vistas one can experience on the planet. Once out on the frozen landscape all eyes are scanning the horizon for bears. And you’ll find them anywhere from snuggled under some scrub brush to nosing around the portable lodges that Frontiers North sets up. We saw two young males sparring for dominance just yards from our bus and a young mother snuggling her twin 6-month-old pups and they seemed just as unconcerned with us as we were fascinated by them. But the moment that I shall always remember was when a nearly 10-foot-tall male decided to investigate us, standing on its hind legs it propped its forepaws on the side of our observation deck and looked up directly into my daughter’s eyes just three feet above him. They locked eyes for just a moment, but it was hours until that smile came off her face and I knew right then that a kept promise is the best gift a father can ever give.