During October and November, the local people both dread and celebrate Polar Bear High Season. This is the time when polar bears migrate to the region and visitors from all over the world follow. It is a GREAT deal of fun especially if you get to view polar bears being airlifted from the Polar Bear Jail. The Churchill Northern Studies Centre, 17 km south of town, serves as base camp for serious arctic research. In town are a number of reasonably comfortable hotels and good shopping opportunities.
The beluga whales live in Hudson Bay but swim up into the Churchill River in order to hunt for fish. Sea North tours takes people on whalewatching tours during the region's short summer.150 species of migratory birds come to the region to feed on the teeming insect life.
On July 1st, or Parks Canada Day if it is still too cold on 7/1, the town holds The Great Hudson Bay Dip and Relay Race. If you want to freeze your butt off, do it. It's fun, but like swimming in melted ice cubes. I know, because I did it. In July, the tundra is alive with flowers and mounds of moist living sphagnum moss. Flowers include miniature orchids, including one so small that it is pollenated by mosquitoes, rose-family relatives such as the white-blossomed Arctic Dryas, cloudberry and dewberry blooms. Wild lignonberries and gooseberries are in flower, and even fields of MacKenzie's vetch.
Tiny ponds and lakes sparkle under the warm sub-Arctic sun like sapphires. From these, as well as bogs, come the many species of mosquitoes that, along with flies, form the plankton of the land. They are the basis of an ecology that supports 150 species of migratory birds, magnificent spiders,amphibians (although not reptiles), insect-eating birds, fish and small mammals. These, in turn, feed the region's magnificent raptors such as the white gyrfalcon and snowy owl, and arctic wolf.
There is also an old rocket range from the Cold War Days back when Arctic Canada was part of the DEW Line. The Churchill Northern Studies Centre now occupies that property. At Gordon Point, at least for a few more years, you'll be able to see one of the vintage military watchtowers. I hope the locals come to realize what a historic monument this is, and restore it.
Upated 2/29/00