Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHURCHILL NORTHERN STUDIES CENTRE
become a polar bear expert
CHURCHILL, MANITOBA
GUY ON A DANCE FLOOR
: Er, you don't happen to know how much polar
bears weigh?
GIRL ON THE DANCE-FLOOR
: No.
GUY
: Neither do I, but it breaks the ice.
—From the movie
Love Life
71 |
If Al Gore's
An Inconvenient Truth
put the fear of God in you, just think what it's doing
to the polar bears. The Arctic sea-ice pack, which is basically the polar bears' lunch box and
front yard, has shrunk 14 percent in the last 20 years. So far, Canada's 13 family groupings of
polar bears (roughly 15,000 all told) are hanging in there, but, suffice it to say, this is not the
vacation you want to procrastinate over.
The Churchill Northern Studies Centre (CNSC), a remote outpost on Hudson Bay, offers
six trips yearly for learning about the bears that the Inuit call
nanuk
. Polar bears spend most of
the year on the ice fattening up on seals, but along Hudson Bay, where the ice gets soggy by
June (it used to be July), they're forced to come ashore for four months. By October, they be-
gin congregating on the west shores waiting for the ice floes to reform. Western Hudson Bay
then becomes “polar bear central.”
A former rocket research center, the CNSC became a diversified research center in 1976,
attracting scientists from around the world who carry out all sorts of subarctic research. To
help fund their research, nearly two dozen projects at any one time, the center offers a half-
dozen or so learning-adventure vacations.
On the five-day “Lords of the Arctic: Hudson Bay's Polar Bears” tour, usually held in
November, you'll take tundra vehicles out to the bears' habitat, helicopters to their dens along
the rugged coastline of Hudson Bay, and dogsleds to view arctic foxes, caribou, snowy owls,
seals, and at least some of the area's 500 species of boreal plants and, at the right time of the
year, arctic wildflowers. The trip also includes a guided walking tour and a visit to the world-
renowned Eskimo Museum.
